Young voters prefer Palestinians — and Trump, new poll shows

74% of those ages 18 to 29 think Israel is intentionally killing civilians, and 55% oppose further US aid to the Jewish state

By Benyamin Cohen, The Forward

Published December 19, 2023

(Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Palestinians and their supporters protest outside the Embassy of Israel in London two days after Hamas killed s1.200 people in an attack on southern Israel, Oct. 9, 2023.

This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

Nearly half of young American voters, 46%, said they sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel, according to a poll published Tuesday — far more than the 27% who sided with the Jewish state. This is in stark contrast to voters overall, where the poll found 47% sympathize more with Israel and 20% with the Palestinians.

The survey of 1,016 registered voters, released Tuesday morning, was conducted by The New York Times and Siena College from Dec. 10 to 14. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The poll also shows that, for the first time, young voters prefer former President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden, 49% to 43%. The Times cites the war as one explanation for the shift. Among voters ages 18 to 29, the poll found, 49% think Trump would do a better job on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, compared to 30% who prefer Biden’s approach.

The poll included a number of other data points that showed younger voters’ diverging opinions on Israel from the electorate overall, including:

55% oppose providing additional economic and military support for Israel, compared to 38% overall.
59% don’t think Israel is seriously interested in a peaceful solution to its conflict with Palestinians, compared to 38% overall.
67% think Israel should stop its current military campaign, even if not all Israeli hostages have been released, compared to 44% overall.
74% believe Israel is not taking enough precautions to avoid civilian casualties, compared to 48% overall.
48% believe Israel is intentionally killing civilians, more than twice the 22% among all voters surveyed.

The new poll joins other recent surveys that have chronicled a shift among younger voters away from generations of U.S. support for the Jewish state since its founding in 1948. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll conducted last week found that 51% of those 18 to 24 think Israel should be “ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.”

The TikTok generation

Some analysts have suggested the shift is rooted in the sources young people rely on for news. The largest contingent of those 18 to 29 in the Times/Siena poll, 35%, said they consume news on social media, with 72% using TikTok.

“Those who identify as regular users of TikTok were the most adamant in their criticism” of Israel, the Times noted, a platform where “brutal images of slain Palestinians bombard youthful eyes.”

More than two-thirds of TikTok users are ages 18 to 34. On that platform, between Oct. 23 and 30, the hashtag #standwithpalestine was viewed 285 million times compared to #standwithisrael at 64 million. A study by the Humanz company, meanwhile, found 109 billion posts on TikTok and Instagram with pro-Palestinian hashtags, 15 times the 7 billion with pro-Israel ones, during a month of the war.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is not the only Jewish topic where younger Americans diverge from older generations. A study released this month by YouGov and The Economist found that 1 in 5 young Americans believe the Holocaust is a myth, compared to 7% of Americans overall.

Benyamin Cohen is the News Director at the Forward. Follow him on Twitter @benyamincohen and sign up for his morning newsletter.

This article was originally published on the Forward.