Poll on Israelis and Palestinians finds big differences between Florida Democrats and Republicans

Anthony Man, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Updated ·5 min read
15

The overwhelming majority of Florida voters sympathize more with the Israelis than with Palestinians in a statewide poll about the situation in the Middle East.

Florida Atlantic University/Mainstreet Research/PolCom Lab poll released Thursday found 59% of the state’s voters said their sympathies are more with the Israelis, while 14% said their sympathies are more with the Palestinians.

Another 17% said neither and 9% said they didn’t know.

The support for the Israelis was driven largely by middle-aged and older voters and Republicans. Among younger voters and Democrats, the Israelis had notably less support and Palestinians more support.

Support for the Israelis is higher in Florida than nationally and support for the Palestinians is lower.

A nationwide Quinnipiac University poll, also released Thursday, posed an almost identical question. It found 54% of U.S. voters said their sympathies lie more with the Israelis and 24% said more with the Palestinians. Another 22% didn’t know or didn’t answer.

The FAU/Mainstreet Florida poll posed this question: “In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?”

Florida voters’ partisan breakdown:

  • Democrats: 39% Israelis, 25% Palestinians, 24% with neither, 12% don’t know.

  • Republicans: 85% Israelis, 4% Palestinians, 7% with neither, 3% don’t know.

  • Independents: 44% Israelis, 15% Palestinians, 26% neither, 15% don’t know.

Nationally, sympathies with the Israelis was a few points lower than in Florida among Democrats and Republicans. Among independents it was slightly higher.

Nationally, sympathies with the Palestinians was 3 points higher than in Florida among Republicans, 7 points higher among independents and 17 points higher among Democrats.

South Florida’s Jewish Democratic members of Congress are so strongly supportive of Israel that they parted with President Joe Biden and the Democratic congressional leadership in voting in favor of the Republican version of legislation to provide financial aid to Israel.

The sentiment shown in the both polls could present political problems for the Democratic Party — which has long relied on the allegiance of Jewish voters as one of its key pillars — if it isn’t seen as solidly supportive of Israel against the threat from Hamas and its allies.

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There were also significant differences based on age, with the youngest group of voters expressing far less support for Israelis and far more support for Palestinians.

Rachel S. Harris, a professor at FAU who holds the Gimelstob Eminent Scholar Chair for Judaic Studies and directs the Jewish Studies program, focused in a telephone interview on the large share of voters in the youngest group that “doesn’t have the knowledge or background to parse this conflict.”

“What is particularly notable here is that the number of these younger voters who have no sympathy for either group or don’t know is greater than even those who support Israelis or Palestinians,” Harris said in a statement. “This suggests that there is a gap in historical knowledge about the conflict and the situation in the Middle East among this younger group.”

Older voters, Harris said, have a longer time horizon with more context about what has happened and is happening in the Middle East. Younger voters by contrast, have only known Israel as a country led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Age and gender breakdowns in Florida:

  • Men: 66% Israelis, 10% Palestinians, 16% neither, 8% don’t know.

  • Women: 53% Israelis, 19% Palestinians, 19% neither, 10% don’t know.

  • Age 18-34: 35% Israelis, 30% Palestinians, 24% neither, 13% don’t know.

  • Age 35-49: 65% Israelis, 11% Palestinians, 18% neither, 6% don’t know.

  • Age 50-64: 65% Israelis, 13% Palestinians, 16% neither, 7% don’t know.

  • Age 65 and older: 64% Israelis, 10% Palestinians, 16% neither, 11% don’t know.

The national results for men and women and voters 50 and older were close to what they were in Florida.

But the national results were notably less sympathetic toward the Israelis and more sympathetic toward the Palestinians among voters younger than 50.

National breakdown:

  • Age 18-34: 29% Israelis, 52% Palestinians, 19% don’t know/didn’t answer.

  • Age 35-49: 48% Israelis, 23% Palestinians, 29% don’t know/didn’t answer.

Southeast Florida — home to the state’s largest proportion of Jewish voters and also the most diverse region of the state — also stood out. Support in the region for the Israelis, 61%, was about what it was statewide.

But support for the Palestinians, at 22%, was much higher than the rest of the state. (Neither, at 14%, and don’t know, at 3%, were lower in southeast Florida than the entire state.)

A caveat about the regional number: While the margin of error for the full statewide poll is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full survey, it is higher for smaller groups — such as Republicans, Democrats, men, women and regional of the state — because the sample sizes are much smaller.

The first day of FAU’s polling was conducted Oct. 27, three weeks after the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel that began the Israel-Hamas war. Polling finished on Nov. 11.

The Florida poll was conducted by Mainstreet Research for Florida Atlantic University’s PolCom Lab, which is a collaboration of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies and Department of Political Science. The survey used text messages to reach 946 Florida voters who responded to a link to complete the survey online.

Quinnipiac’s national question — “From what you know about the situation in the Middle East, do your sympathies lie more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” — was slightly different from FAU’s.

And its methodology and timeframe were different. Quinnpiac used live callers to landlines and cell phones to survey 1,574 registered voters from Nov. 9-13. It also reported a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Facebook, Threads.net and Post.news.