Two polls find growing split among Republicans over support for Israel
As support for Israel declines nationally, new polling reveals widening cracks within Trump’s coalition over U.S. support for Israel
A woman holds a combination American-Israeli flags during Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee Of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving on the National Mall on May 17, 2026 in Washington, DC. Photo by Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(JTA) — Two new polls of American voters have found declining public support for Israel and growing discontent among Republicans over President Donald Trump’s direction on Israel.
According to a New York Times/Siena poll published Monday, 38% of potential Republican voters said they would like to see the next Republican candidate for president move “in a new direction” on Israel, as opposed to following Trump’s lead.
Nearly a third of potential Republican voters also said they believed Trump had been “too supportive of Israel,” according to the poll of 1,500 U.S. voters this month, which has a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.
The poll adds to growing signals that Israel is becoming a fault line within the Republican Party as well as on the left, where it has been increasingly divisive for years. In a sign of tensions surrounding the split by Republican leadership, Congress’ most anti-Israel Republican is facing a steep primary challenge from a Trump-backed Republican on Tuesday.
MAGA-aligned Republicans who support Trump in particular are more likely than other Trump voters to back the Israeli government, according to a different poll released last week by Politico.
The survey asked respondents who voted for Trump whether they identified with the president’s “Make America Great Again” movement. Just over half said they identified as MAGA.
The Politico poll, which was conducted in partnership with Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London, found that nearly half of MAGA Trump voters say they back Israel and approve of the actions of its current government, while just 29% of non-MAGA Trump voters say the same.
The Politico poll found that 41% of MAGA Trump voters believe that Israel is justified in its military campaign in Gaza, compared to 31% of non-Maga Trump voters. The poll surveyed 2,035 U.S. adults online from April 11 to 14 and had an overall margin of sampling error of ±2.2 percentage points.
Trump voters were also split over the perceived influence of the Israeli government over U.S. foreign policy, with 22% of MAGA voters saying they believed the Israeli government had too much influence, compared to 32% of non-MAGA voters.
When asked about the spending of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, on U.S. elections, a topic that has increasingly split American Jews, 20% of MAGA Trump voters said they oppose the group’s “efforts to influence US elections,” compared to 31% of non-MAGA voters. AIPAC has increasingly emerged as a bogeyman in U.S. politics.
The New York Times/Siena poll found Trump’s overall approval rating had sunk to 37%, with 64% of American voters saying they believed Trump made the wrong decision entering the Iran war. Among Republicans, support for Trump’s decision to enter the war was much higher, at 70%.
The Times poll also also found that Americans are more likely to sympathize with Palestinians over Israelis, with 37% saying they sympathized more with Palestinians compared with 35% who say they sympathize more with Israelis.
The finding is in line with a growing number since the beginning of the war with Gaza that have shown growing sympathy for Palestinians among American voters.
When asked whether the United States should provide additional economic and military support to Israel, 57% of American voters overall said they opposed doing so, compared with 37% who supported it. Among Republicans, 66% said they supported additional support to Israel versus 30% who opposed.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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