Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Bibi Favorability at 34% With Americans

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is viewed favorably by 35% of Americans, compared to 23% unfavorable, a new Gallup poll revealed.

Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats to view Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu favorably, and President Obama’s Jewish support remains steady, according to polling by Gallup.

Fifty percent of Republicans view Netanyahu favorably, according to the poll published last week by Gallup, while 25 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of Independents have a favorable view. Only 16 percent of Republicans view Netanyahu unfavorably, as opposed to 23 percent of Independents and 31 percent of Democrats.

Overall, the poll showed the Israeli leader with a favorability rating of 35 percent to 23 percent unfavorable, with 41 percent having no opinion.

The poll, conducted July 9-12 over the phone with 1,014 adults and timed ahead of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s Israel visit last weekend, has a margin of error of 4 percentage points for its overall results and 6 percentage points for its subsets.

Separate Gallup tracking polls in June showed Jewish support for Obama remaining steady at 68 percent to 25 percent, within the statistical margin of error of the 64-29 showing in April and May.

The tracking polls reached 576 Jewish registered voters and have a margin of error of 5 percentage points.

Separately, an Israel Project poll released Tuesday found that eight in 10 Americans see Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program as a threat to the United States and its allies, with 39 percent seeing it as a “very big” threat and 41 percent seeing it as s a moderate threat.

The poll of 800 likely voters, by Public Opinion Strategies on July 18 and 19, found that the same percentage – 80 – believe Iran is building nuclear weapons, despite its denials.

Seventy-eight percent of voters supported tough sanctions against Iran.

The margin of error was 3.46 percentage points.

A message from our editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren

We're building on 127 years of independent journalism to help you develop deeper connections to what it means to be Jewish today.

With so much at stake for the Jewish people right now — war, rising antisemitism, a high-stakes U.S. presidential election — American Jews depend on the Forward's perspective, integrity and courage.

—  Jodi Rudoren, Editor-in-Chief 

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.