A new poll found that half of U.S. voters — including 77% of Democrats — believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide, in a finding that adds to mounting signals of deep public disapproval of Israel’s operations there.
The poll, conducted by Quinnipiac between Aug. 21 and 25, also found that 60% of Americans said the United States should not send more weapons for Israel to use against Hamas in Gaza.
The rate was higher — 75% — among Democrats, reflecting a position being adopted at a rapid clip by Democrats in Congress, including, this week, a leading moderate on the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith.
A month into the Gaza war in November 2023, Quinnipiac found that 39% of Americans opposed sending more aid to Israel for use against Hamas. The following month, 46% opposed sending more aid. Since then, the number has only risen.
The poll also asked a question the firm has surveyed on for more than two decades: “From what you know about the situation in the Middle East, do your sympathies lie more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” The latest results found a statistical dead heat, the strongest showing for the Palestinians in the poll’s history.
“Support for the Palestinians grows while the appetite for funding Israel militarily dips sharply. And a harsh assessment of the way Israel is prosecuting the Gaza campaign invokes a word of infamy,” Tim Malloy, a Quinnipiac analyst, said in a statement summarizing the new poll’s results.
The poll found that 35% of respondents, largely Republicans, said they believed Israel was definitely not committing a genocide in Gaza, and 15% said they could not answer.
Israel rejects the genocide charge, with multiple officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arguing that if they wanted to conduct a campaign of mass extermination in Gaza, they could have.
An increasing number of public figures, including Holocaust and genocide scholars, have said they believe the term is appropriate to use to describe Israel’s campaign in Gaza, citing widespread destruction, limitations on humanitarian aid and harsh statements by Israeli government officials. (At least one major Holocaust historian has also said he believes the term does not apply.)
A poll conducted earlier in the month by the Economist found that 40% of Americans believed Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted genocide, while the rest were evenly split between saying it did not and not having an answer.
The latest Quinnipiac poll surveyed 1,220 registered voters and had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
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