Americans for the first time sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis in their conflict, according to a Gallup poll released Friday, indicating a sea change in the public views of Israel’s key ally.

Views on the Middle East divide sharply along partisan lines, with the shift over the past year the result of more independents souring on Israel.

Overall, 41 percent of Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians and 36% sided with Israel, the poll said, with the rest undecided or saying they favored both or neither.

The gap is not statistically significant, but it marks the first time since Gallup asked the question more than two decades ago that Israel was not on top.

It also marks a sharp difference from just a year ago, when Israel led in sympathies 46 to 33 percent.

“It’s the first time they have reached parity, which is really quite striking,” said Benedict Vigers, a senior global news writer at Gallup. “In not many years, that very significant gap in public opinion has now completely closed.”

Gallup: “Israelis No Longer Ahead in Americans' Middle East Sympathies”https://t.co/FlFEhkBdaZ — Politics & Poll Tracker ???? (@PollTracker2024) February 27, 2026

Gallup: “Israelis No Longer Ahead in Americans' Middle East Sympathies”https://t.co/FlFEhkBdaZ

— Politics & Poll Tracker ???? (@PollTracker2024) February 27, 2026

When asked about their sympathies, independents sided with the Palestinian people by 11 percentage points.

Members of US President Donald Trump’s Republican Party continued to back Israel strongly, with 70% siding with Israel, although that figure has declined by 10 percentage points over the past decade.

Democrats’ views of Israel have grown increasingly negative since a decade ago, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly broke with then-US president Barack Obama on his diplomacy with Iran.

The US is Israel’s main ally in the international community, providing both military and diplomatic backing to the Jewish state.

Some Democratic voters faulted former US president Joe Biden for not doing more to rein in Israel’s offensive in Gaza following the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023.

In the latest poll, 65% of Democrats sympathized with the Palestinians and 17% with Israel.

Younger adults — those 18 to 34 in this poll — are also increasingly sympathetic toward the Palestinians, according to the Gallup survey.

Younger Americans’ sympathies have been shifting toward the Palestinians since around 2020, and reached a new high this year. About half of 18 to 34-year-olds say they have more sympathy for the Palestinians, compared to about a quarter who say that about the Israelis.

Anti-Israel student protests appeared on college campuses across the US during the Gaza war, asking colleges to cut investments supporting Israel.

But the shift is only “partly a generational story,” according to Vigers.

The new poll also found for the first time that middle-aged Americans, those 35 to 54, expressed more sympathy for the Palestinians than the Israelis — a reversal from last year. And while Americans over 55 are more sympathetic toward Israel, that gap is narrowing, too.

“With adults over 55, they are more sympathetic to Israelis, but it’s as low as it’s been since 2005,” Vigers said.

Meanwhile, 57% of US adults favor the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to the new polling. That’s not significantly different from recent years, as at least half of US adults have supported an independent Palestinian state since 2020.

Vigers noted that “party polarization is at or near its record high” on this question, even though it hasn’t been sharply increasing year over year.

In the last few years, there’s been an uptick among Democrats and independents in support for the two-state solution. Now, about three-quarters of Democrats and roughly 6 in 10 independents say they support an independent Palestinian state. Only about one-third of Republicans say the same.

The opinions of the people who would be directly affected by a two-state solution are quite different. Only about three in 10 Israelis living in Israel and Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem said they supported a two-state solution in which an independent Palestinian state existed alongside Israel, according to the Gallup World Poll conducted in 2025.

“On the ground, in the region, far fewer Israelis and Palestinians tell us that they are in favor of the two-state solution than Americans when asked a very similar question,” Vigers said. “There is that interesting sort of disconnect between the region itself and Americans’ views toward it.”

The Gallup poll was conducted by telephone with 1,001 US adults from February 2 to 16. The margin of error was  ±4%.

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