Much has been made about young Americans’ reactions to the war between Israel and Hamas, as well as its implications for antisemitism and Islamophobia. A series of polls from October and December 2023, for example, reported that those between 18 and 24 were split 50/50 on whether they supported Israel or Hamas. In fact, this result gained so much traction that candidate for the GOP nomination for president, Vivek Ramaswamy cited it at a campaign event in November 2023. However, national surveys usually lack the sample size to confidently report percentages of small subgroups, like 18 to 24 year olds, raising questions about the validity of findings like these. Between December 21, 2023 and January 29, 2024, we surveyed 30,460 individuals aged 18 and older across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. We included feeling thermometers for Israel, Palestine, Jews, and Muslims, asking people to separately rate how they feel about each group on a 0 to 100 scale, where 0 indicates feeling very unfavorable or cold, 50 indicates not feeling particularly warm or cold toward that group, and 100 indicates feeling very favorable or warm. Our survey’s sample size allows us to zoom in on subgroups within the population. For instance, it included 3,294 Americans between ages 18 and 24. This allows us to look within this age group and break young Americans down by partisanship, as our survey includes 1101 18-24-year-old Democrats and 676 18-24-year-old Republicans. In this report, we examine how responses to these four thermometer ratings varied by age, race, education, religion, and partisanship, as well as how the different thermometer scores are correlated with one another.

KEY FINDINGS

Young Americans were less likely than older Americans to rate Israel favorably, but they still rated Jews highly. 18 to 24 year old Americans, for example, rated Israel at a 40/100 but Jews at 71/100. While ratings of Jews and Israel are correlated overall, the correlation is significantly weaker for younger Americans, relative to older ones.

Across all demographics, respondents rate Jews higher than Israel and Muslims higher than Palestine, but these gaps vary. The Civic Health and Institutions Project: A 50-State Survey (CHIP50) 5

Democrats ages 18 to 24 rated Israel the lowest at a 36/100, but rated Jews higher than both Republicans and Democrats ages 25 to 44 and 45 to 64 at a 75/100.

Republicans ages 18 to 24 rated both Israel (49/100) and Jews (66/100) lower than their older Republican counterparts.

Respondents with more education rated both Jews and Muslims higher than those with less education.

For every age group, ratings of Palestine and ratings of Muslims were positively and consistently correlated.

Ratings of Muslims and Jews are not zero-sum; instead, they were strongly and positively correlated; the higher one rated one group, the more likely they were to rate the other one highly as well. It is important to note that feeling thermometers are a blunt measure of how one feels toward a particular group or country, but they are nonetheless widely employed in social science research because of the variation they provide in telling us how cold or warm people feel about various groups.