I have gone over every single approval poll listed on 538 from today until October 12/16th. I pulled out all the polls that have relevant information on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Why? I hate life and myself. But that’s irrelevant. Let’s see what they say, starting at the top and most recent (positive numbers are more pro Israeli position).
News Nation/Decision Desk HQ
This poll is one of the more striking pieces of evidence. Let me tell you, as someone who watches approval polls like my dog watches squirrels, Biden has not polled positively on an issue other than small culture war issues like trans stuff for a year+.
This poll shows:
Overall Biden approval: [44-56] (-12)
Biden approval on Israel/Hamas: [52-48] (+4) (!!!)
Approval of sending weapons/military aid to Israel: [70-30] (+40)
Right support/Not supportive enough of Israel vs Too supportive: [71.14% – 16%] (+55)
This is the first big issue I’ve seen him positive on in almost a year.
YouGov Poll
Overall Biden approval: [40-55] (-15)
Biden approval on:
* Economy: [40-53] (-13)
* Immigration: [31-60] (-19)
* National Security: [41-47] (-8)
* Other things: [Below 40] (<-10)
* Israel-Palestine: [38 – 42] (-4) {!!!!}
Israel/Palestine is his strongest issue, by far!
ANMP
This poll has very biased wording, so take it with a grain of salt. But a couple questions of note:
Israel must do what’s necessary to destroy hamas even though civ casualties are tragic/Civilian deaths are never acceptable, Israel is at fault and should cease military operation: [56-27] (+29)
Dems: Support a dem challenger who blames terrorists OR Support a currrent dem congressperson who blames America and Israel for Terrorist attacks: [67.8-15.5] (+52)
Gallup
This was the one poll cited to show Biden’s drop in approval, and i will say, the sudden drop among dems is striking, but it’s not too far from previous drops, and it isn’t explained in the poll. The poll doesn’t ask about Israel/Palestine, and we can’t draw that conclusion. And the authors say some misleading stuff to suggest so without evidence, so that really left a sour taste in my mouth reading this… may have been something else though.
They cite a poll that is a few months out of date where Dems were more sympathetic towards Palestinians for the first time to explain the drop. This is very misleading because polls that I cite later show that that sympathy completely flipped after the terrorist attack. This has been consistently shown. However, this is one piece of evidence to consider that younger dems aren’t so on-board with pro-Israel policies as older generations (they appear evenly split). But do these voters vote?
Suffolk
Support/Oppose military aid to Israel: [58-43] (+15)
If you look at the crosstabs it even wins among 18-34 y/o: 49-45 (+4). There is a minority of anti-Israel young people, they are very vocal and very loud, but they are a minority still.
CBS News/YouGov
Overall Biden approval: [40-60] (-20)
Biden approval on:
* Economy: [37-63] (-26)
* Immigration: [32-68] (-36)
* Jobs and employment issues: [44-56] (-12)
* Russia-Ukraine: [44-56] (-12)
* Israel-Palestine: [44-56] (-12)
Not as strong for him as the other polls, but still tied for his strongest issue!
Quinnipiac University
Indeed, the issue of support for Israel is one of Biden’s strongest. More voters, polled by Quinnipiac, approve of Biden’s response to Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel (42%) and his policy towards Israel overall (42%) than disapprove (37% and 39% respectively).
It’s one of his strongest issues among voters. The same can be said of his policy on Russia’s war on Ukraine, which is another subject of Thursday night’s speech.
I came into this to prove that, overall, this issue doesn’t hurt Biden much (and compared to the economy, I still believe it doesn’t have much impact). But the evidence is clear to me that, at this point, this issue helps him, which is the opposite of the narrative you hear from lefties on twitter. I get it, they truly believe that getting Biden to withdraw support for Israel is the right thing to do, and threatening his election and approval is the way to do that. But when you look at the data, they are just plain wrong – Israel is a winning issue for Biden.