We polled young Americans on antisemitism and Israel-Palestine. Here’s what we found

Antisemitic views are most common among self-identified "extremely conservative" young voters; almost half of voters under 30 favor stopping all military aid to Israel

Antisemitism is a pressing and sensitive issue. It often ties into and gets tangled up in discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the discourse around antisemitism and Israel-Palestine often relies on generalizations and speculation rather than hard data, particularly when it comes to the views of young Americans. That is why our team at the Yale Youth Poll — an undergraduate-led research organization — asked over 3,400 registered US voters, half of whom were under the age of 35, about their views on antisemitism, Zionism, and Israel.

The poll — which is being released to the public today — sampled 3,426 registered voters, including 1,706 voters aged 18-34, allowing us to compare views across generations. Fielding was done by Verasight, and results were weighted for age, sex, race, education, and party identification. ​​The survey was conducted in English, and its post-weighting 95% CI margin of error is ±1.7% for the full sample and ±2.4% for the youth sample. Here is what we found.

Younger voters are more likely to hold antisemitic views than older voters

When asked whether Jewish people have had a positive, negative, or neutral impact on the United States, just 8% of voters overall said that they believed that Jews have had a negative impact. These numbers were higher among younger respondents: 18% of 18- to 22-year-olds said Jewish Americans have had a negative impact on the country, as did 15% of 23- to 29-year-olds.

We also asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with the following three statements commonly considered to be antisemitic, drawn from a similar battery used in a series of papers by political scientists Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden:

1. Jews in the United States are more loyal to Israel than to America.

2. It’s appropriate to boycott Jewish American-owned businesses to protest the war in Gaza.

3. Jews in the United States have too much power.

Among all voters, 70% disagreed with all three of these items. But the same is true for just 57% of 18- to 22-year-olds and 60% of 23- to 29-year-olds.

These results may be picking up on similar trends as polling from Blue Rose Research, which found that a quarter of young people hold explicitly antisemitic attitudes (i.e., will say that they feel unfavorably towards Jewish people).

In our overall sample, smaller proportions of Black (62%), Asian (57%), and Hispanic (63%) respondents agreed with zero of the statements than white respondents (74%). Among voters ages 18-34, the differences by race were narrower, with 65% of young white respondents, 57% of young Hispanic respondents, 54% of young Black respondents, and 60% of young Asian respondents disagreeing with all three statements. However, in line with Hersh and Royden’s findings, young white liberals were much more likely to disagree with all three statements (73%) than young white conservatives (55%).

Interestingly, for the overall sample, no clear partisan or ideological divides emerge in the total number of statements agreed with, but, among voters ages 18-34, self-identified “extremely conservative” voters are much more likely to agree with at least one statement (64%) than 18-34 voters in general (38%) or any other ideological subgroup of young voters.

What do people think “Zionism” means?

Second, our poll found a large generational gap in how people define “Zionism.” We presented respondents with six different definitions of Zionism — drawn from groups ranging from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee to Jewish Voice for Peace, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee — and asked them to select the ones that match how they personally define the term.

Among all voters, the most commonly selected definitions described Zionism as “self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people,” “the continued existence of Israel in the face of calls for its destruction,” and the Jewish people having an equal “right to statehood.” About a third of respondents simply reported that they were not familiar with the term “Zionism.”

However, younger voters were much more likely to select negative definitions: among voters ages 18-22, the most commonly selected definitions described Zionism as “maintaining a Jewish demographic majority in Palestine by driving out the native Palestinian population,” creating “a nation-state where Jews get more rights than others,” and “a form of racism and apartheid against Palestinians.”

We also asked voters for their thoughts on the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. In the general sample, 46% of respondents believe that Israel should exist as a Jewish state, as opposed to existing as a non-Jewish state (18%) or not existing at all (5%). However, the picture is very different among younger populations. Specifically, 15% of respondents under 30 years old believe that Israel should not exist, and less than 30% believe that Israel should exist as a Jewish state. In contrast, 64% of respondents aged 65+ said that Israel should exist as a Jewish state.

Our poll also found a racial divide in the belief that Israel should exist as a Jewish state. In particular, Black (24%), Asian (30%), and Hispanic (36%) voters were less likely to say that Israel should exist as a Jewish state than white voters (51%). Black voters had an especially high proportion of respondents who said they were not sure of their opinion on this question (54%), compared to just 31% of the overall sample who said so.

Younger voters support reducing or ending military aid to Israel

Finally, our poll found that young voters overwhelmingly support decreasing American military aid to Israel, or ceasing aid entirely. Voters overall were split on the question of aid: 40% of respondents supported increasing or maintaining existing levels of military aid to Israel, while 43% favored either decreasing aid or stopping it entirely. But around two-thirds of voters under 30 favored reducing or ending military aid to Israel, with a plurality — 46% — favoring a total cutoff of aid.

The poll results also showed that self-identified Republicans, conservatives, and 2024 Trump voters were more likely to favor either increasing or maintaining the current level of military aid to Israel, while self-identified Democrats, liberals, and 2024 Harris voters were more likely to favor decreasing aid or stopping it entirely.

What counts as antisemitism? Who gets to decide?

As part of this survey, we presented respondents with a series of hypothetical scenarios and asked whether they thought each one did or did not constitute antisemitism. We found a wide range of responses depending on the specific scenario. It is important to note that this question was designed to reveal what specific scenarios people think are or are not antisemitic; the goal is not to pass normative judgments on whether voters are choosing the ‘correct’ answer. Notably, 56% of respondents chose “not sure” when asked whether using the phrase “globalize the intifada” counted as antisemitism. A plurality (47%) said calling the situation in Gaza a “genocide” was not antisemitic.

Different groups within the sample viewed the scenarios differently. For example, sometimes conservatives were more likely to label a scenario as antisemitic (especially the Israel-related scenarios), while other times liberals were more likely to do so (especially the scenarios related to the Jewish community in general, rather than to Israel). Still, one trend that emerged was that young voters were generally more limited in what they considered to be anti-Jewish prejudice, particularly in scenarios related to Israel.

Finally, we conducted an experiment to gauge whether voters perceived antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Black racism similarly in the context of university speech policies. We split our sample into three groups, each of which was assigned randomly to one of these three test conditions. In each test condition, voters were asked who should get to decide what counts as antisemitism/Islamophobia/anti-Black racism when it comes to university policies (checking all that apply).

Responses were very split. Voters were more likely to say that the Jewish (36%) and Black (39%) communities as a whole should get to decide what counts as antisemitism and anti-Black racism, respectively, compared to the Muslim community as a whole getting to decide what counts as Islamophobia (29%). Respondents were also more likely to say that society as a whole should get to decide what counts as anti-Black racism (43%) compared to what counts as antisemitism (36%) or Islamophobia (34%).

Conclusion

We want to make one final remark. These data show that both antisemitic views and anti-Israel stances are more common among younger voters. That does not necessarily mean that the former is causing the latter, or vice versa. It is difficult to untangle the direction of causality here. Clearly, there are voters who are driven toward anti-Israel beliefs by their pre-existing antisemitic beliefs, as well as voters who adopt antisemitic views as a result of pre-existing anti-Israel views or of conflating Israel with the Jewish diaspora. And there are voters who are deeply critical of Israel but are not antisemitic, as well as voters who may be antisemitic but are not as critical of Israel.

Our poll is unable to distinguish between these types of voters. Nonetheless, our data sheds some light on the locus and contours of attitudes toward Jewish individuals and Israel among our young peers and among Americans more broadly. We hope that this poll will contribute to a more informed public discourse.

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This poll also contained questions on the 2026 and 2028 elections, the One Big Beautiful Bill, and young people’s social lives. Full results are posted on the Yale Youth Poll website.

The Yale Youth Poll is an undergraduate-led research organization. During the 2024-2025 academic year, the Yale Youth Poll received funding from the Democratic Innovations Program at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. For the 2025-2026 academic year, the Yale Youth Poll has received funding from the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism and programmatic support from Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies.

The Yale Youth Poll operates with complete editorial and methodological independence. All polling activities, including questionnaire development, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of results, are conducted entirely by the undergraduate students behind the Yale Youth Poll. The findings and conclusions presented on this website and on our Substack reflect solely the work and analysis of the Yale Youth Poll and do not constitute an official position of, nor are they endorsed by, the Democratic Innovations program, the ISPS, the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, or Yale University.