Israel Is Fast Alienating the Democratic Base

Opinion|Democrats Need to Understand That Opinions on Israel Are Changing Fast

To grasp the significance of Zohran Mamdani’s shocking victory in last month’s Democratic primary for mayor of New York, it’s worth recalling another upset, which took place 11 years ago and some 300 miles to the south, in a Republican congressional primary near Richmond, Va. In 2014 Dave Brat, a little-known economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, challenged Eric Cantor, who was then the House majority leader. Mr. Brat was outspent by a margin of more than 10 to one. Despite that, he won by 11 percentage points, thus becoming the first primary challenger to oust a House majority leader in American history.

Ideologically, Mr. Brat and Mr. Mamdani have little in common. But they won their primaries for similar reasons: Each exploited the chasm between his party’s grass roots and its elites. In 2014 many Republican voters loathed the G.O.P. establishment. Today, many Democrats feel a similar fury toward the politicians who claim to represent them. In 2014 Mr. Brat used one issue in particular to illustrate that divide: immigration. Democratic alienation today is more nebulous. No single topic seems to loom as large as immigration did among Republicans a decade ago. Still, Mr. Mamdani’s victory illustrates the huge gulf between many ordinary Democrats and the Democratic establishment on one subject in particular: Israel.

Mr. Mamdani focused his message on making New York City affordable. The campaign of the race’s presumed front-runner, Andrew Cuomo, in addition to attacking Mr. Mamdani as inexperienced and soft on crime, focused intensely on his opponent’s unapologetic commitment to Palestinian rights. That commitment was one reason that many political commentators and operatives assumed Mr. Mamdani, a young state assemblyman, could not win. They didn’t appreciate how broadly public opinion on this issue has changed.

The shift has been national. In 2013, according to Gallup, Democrats sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 36 percentage points. Those numbers have now flipped, after more than a decade of nearly uninterrupted right-wing rule by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the rise to power of crude bigots like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and Israel’s mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: This February, Gallup found that Democrats sympathize with Palestinians over Israel by a margin of 38 percentage points. According to a February survey by The Economist and YouGov, 46 percent of Democrats want the United States to reduce military aid to the Jewish state. Only 6 percent want to increase it, and 24 percent want it to remain at the level it is.

These opinions aren’t restricted to young progressives. Older Democrats’ views have swung even more sharply than young ones against Israel in recent years. Between 2022 and 2025, according to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Democrats age 50 and over with an unfavorable view of the Jewish state jumped a remarkable 23 percentage points. This shift has largely erased the party’s generation gap on the subject.

Only one in three Democrats now views Israel favorably, according to Gallup. That makes Israel significantly less popular than Cuba, and only slightly more popular than China. Despite this, the party’s most powerful figures — from the minority leaders Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries to many of the Democrats likely to run for president in 2028 — oppose conditioning U.S. military support on Israel’s willingness to uphold human rights. This places them in clear conflict with their party’s base.