Support for Israel plummets to 13% among US voters aged 18-34: 'Sea change'
Support for Israel has declined among all age groups since 2023, with the sharpest decline taking place among those aged 18-34, almost two-thirds of whom expressed a "negative" view of the country, according to a recent NBC News poll.
In what the outlet described as a "sea change" regarding voters' opinions on Israel and the Palestinian territories, the poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted from Feb. 27 to March 3 found that 63% of voters under age 35 have a negative view of Israel, compared to just 13% who have a positive view and 23% who hold a neutral view.
The numbers show a steep drop-off of support for Israel among young voters compared to a similar survey NBC News conducted shortly after Hamas' terrorist attacks against Israel in October 2023, when 26% of voters under 35 years old viewed the nation positively, 37% viewed it negatively and 37% were neutral.
Views toward Israel were least changed among those aged 65 and older, though even that age demographic saw a decline from 64% viewing it positively in 2023 to 55% this year.
Brutal new polling from NBC News shows views of Israel among Americans have declined across all age groups in the past several years. pic.twitter.com/F6LDMtgxWk
— a newsman (@a_newsman) March 16, 2026
The poll also found that growing antipathy toward Israel is most evident among Democrats and independents, with almost 60% of Democrats and almost 50% of independents viewing it negatively this year; in 2023, the negative views were 35% and 22%, respectively.
Among Republicans, 63% expressed a positive view of Israel in 2023, compared to 54% this year.
The poll comes as President Donald Trump's political base is fracturing over the war in Iran and other issues in the lead-up to the 2026 mid-term elections.
On Sunday evening, Trump released a lengthy defense of Fox News opinion host Mark Levin after the political commentator, who opposed Trump in 2016, has been engaged in a heated public feud with other conservative pundits such as Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson over their divergent foreign policy views regarding the Middle East.
The poll also comes as the number of young American Evangelicals who support Israel and see it as crucial to the End Times had been steadily declining even before the war in Gaza, according to a series of surveys laid out in the 2023 book Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Opinion on Israel.
Authored by professors Kirill M. Bumin, Ph.D., and Motti Inbari, the book examined the religious beliefs and foreign policy attitudes of Evangelicals in the U.S. and found that 33.6% of young Evangelicals under 30 expressed support for Israel in late 2021, compared to 67.9% in 2018.
Experts who spoke to The Christian Post in 2024 had varying explanations for such a trend, ranging from the antisemitic influence of cultural Marxism in American universities to the internet offering wider exposure to Christian eschatological views that differ from premillennial dispensationalism, which emphasizes the role of modern Israel.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth acknowledged during a recent interview that there is a religious aspect to the war in Iran, which comes amid concerns regarding what role Christian, Jewish and Islamic eschatologies are playing in the conflict.
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com
