Majority of Young Republicans Oppose Aid to Israel

Post Reply New Topic

The burgeoning divide within the Republican Party over Israel – and the party's adjacent fights about antisemitism – have been among the defining fault lines in the GOP's rapidly worsening civil war, What is becoming increasingly evident, however, is just how much the generational divide over Israel influences the Republican debate over America First, MAGA and Donald Trump's twilight years as party torchbearer.

According to new polling from the IMEU Policy Project, conducted by YouGov, young Republicans (defined as 44-years-old and younger) are rapidly shifting away from decades-old status quos surrounding the U.S.-Israel relationship, which could have significant ramifications in next year's midterm elections and the 2028 presidential primaries.

The Institute for Middle East Understanding, the nonprofit that commissioned the poll, is dedicated to raising awareness about the Palestinian cause among U.S. lawmakers and the American public. That they would commission a poll of Republicans goes against historical precedent in its own right, though it speaks to the rare confluence of political camps in America today.

The survey of 1,287 Republicans found that young voters view military assistance to Israel as an electoral weakness, both in Republican primaries and in general elections between Republicans and Democrats. The data illustrates how America's generational divide over Israel has quickly become a signature element of conflicts within the GOP.

A majority of Republican voters under age 45 say they would prefer to support a candidate who supports reducing U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons to Israel in the 2028 Republican presidential primary (51 percent), while only 27 percent prefer a candidate who would maintain or increase weapons.

Sixty-three percent of young Republicans – and 59 percent across age groups – agree that the U.S. should independently investigate credible accusations of the Israeli military killing American civilians, while half of young Republicans believe that "legitimate criticism of Israel that should be protected under free speech is too often accused of being antisemitic."

Fifty-three percent of young Republicans further object to renewing the current 10-year, $38-billion weapons agreement between the two countries – a deal that, set to expire in 2028, will be negotiated by an outgoing Trump administration.

These historically unique views extend to young Republicans' view of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: 59 percent of respondents age 45 and older indicated a favorable impression of the Israeli leader, compared to 31 percent of Republicans 44 and younger. Netanyahu's favorability drops to 19 percent among Republicans who regularly watch Fox News, compared to 25 percent of GOP voters who do not watch the conservative network closely aligned with Netanyahu.

The IMEU/YouGov polling also discovered that 24 percent of Republicans under 45 would prefer to support a Democratic candidate over the Republican if the Democrat supports prioritizing lower prices for Americans over funding weapons and military aid for Israel.

"[Israel] does seem like something that could be an electoral liability for Republicans, both in 2026 and as this continues into 2028," an IMEU Policy Project spokesperson told Haaretz.

The timing of the poll alongside the news cycle's recent focus on the GOP civil war on Israel, however, is "happenstance – these things take a long time to develop." The commissioning of the survey was instead motivated by the advocacy group's findings from polling of Democratic primary voters in September, which found vocal opposition to 10-year weapons-sale agreements.

"We thought 'Well, if people think that the Democratic shift against U.S. support for Israel is old news, then we might as well just look at what the Republican side is doing.' This was before a lot of the latest news around this started happening," the spokesperson noted, adding the poll was written before GOP controversies of recent months.

The polling is the latest example of young Republicans rapidly evolving in their views of Israel. According to a March 2025 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 50 percent of Republicans under the age of 50 hold unfavorable views of Israel. This marks a 15-point increase from 2022, when Pew last posed the question.

A survey of more than 2,000 voters by Big Data Poll, a firm close with the Trump administration, further found last month that 33.4 percent of Republicans aged 18-29 indicated that their "sympathies" are with Palestine over Israel, while 27.9 percent chose Israel.

According to a University of Maryland Critical Issues poll conducted in summer 2025, only 22 percent of Republicans aged 18-34 believed Israel's wartime actions in Gaza could be justified. This extends to young evangelical GOP voters – the Christian base long at the bedrock of Israel's support within the party and a major motivating factor for Netanyahu's efforts to politicize Israel's standing in Washington along partisan lines. Among younger evangelical Republicans, 32 percent say they sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians, further illustrating the historical shift.

"The emerging gap between young and old Republicans on Israel is stunning," Shibley Telhami, the director of the University of Maryland poll and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Haaretz.

"The 28-point gap our poll found on sympathies with Israel between younger and older Republicans is unprecedented and seems to have occurred rapidly. It drew me to watch more of the podcasters' discourse on the right, which made me even more persuaded that we are witnessing a generational paradigm shift among young Americans broadly, where Israel is increasingly seen as a genocidal villain," he added.

The GOP's antisemitism debate
The trends have undoubtedly been echoed, if not outright encouraged, by leading America First voices such as Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and the departing representative Marjorie Taylor Greene – all of whom argue that Israel's status as an ungrateful protectorate stands to jeopardize Trump's ambitious political aspirations (often while veering into conspiracy-theory territory while lamenting Israel's influence over U.S. lawmakers).

Big Data Poll Director Richard Baris told Bannon's podcast that "the polling on Israel is the real headline: Young America First voters (aged 25-29) now sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israel." He pointed to the 35.3 percent of self-identified America First Republicans (the other option being "traditional Republicanism") who say they believe Israel's actions in Gaza amount to genocide.

"The right must focus on the future of the movement, not the priorities of the last 20 years," Baris said, adding that Gaza has "accelerated the trend of Israel losing support massively."
This has set up a dynamic where more traditional pro-Israel hawkish Republicans with presidential aspirations, such as Senator Ted Cruz, have attempted to paint the crisis among the GOP concerning Israel as a key defining issue – and a differentiating issue between him and his future rivals.