Most Jewish Voters Believe Trump Policies Fueling Antisemitism, Poll Finds

Most Jewish voters in the US disapprove of President Donald Trump’s policy choices and have “negative assessments of his personal character,” according to a newly released poll.

A new nonpartisan group called the Jewish Voters Resource Center, which seeks to collect and disseminate data on Jewish voters, commissioned and published the survey, which was conducted by the polling firm GBAO Strategies from April 21 through May 1 among 800 registered Jewish voters.

Some of the terms which those polled most frequently applied to the president included “dangerous” (72 percent), “racist” (69 percent), “fascist” (69 percent), and, despite his administration’s efforts to counter anti-Jewish discrimination on university campuses, “antisemitic” (52 percent).

Respondents gave Trump an overall approval rating of 26 percent. This figure mirrors polling in recent years of partisan differences among Jews. A 2021 Pew poll found that 26 percent of Jews identified with the Republican Party.

The survey also showed continued worries about antisemitism, with 89 percent described as concerned and 62 percent “very concerned.” Antisemitism on college campuses also drew concerns from 77 percent, with 55 percent “very concerned.” The intensity of concerns showed a disparity with older Jewish respondents more worried than younger Americans.

The survey suggests that large numbers of Jews regard many Trump administration efforts to counter antisemitism as accelerants that will fuel more hate. Sixty-one percent said that deporting anti-Israel activists will make antisemitism worse, and 63 percent said that the ending of federal observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day will as well.

Last month, a survey conducted by the Mellman Group and published by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that an overwhelming majority of American Jews disapprove of Trump’s job performance thus far, including his efforts to combat antisemitism.

However, a poll commissioned by the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) and conducted by Schoen Cooperman Research that was published weeks earlier found that most American adults, including college students, support the Trump administration’s cancellation of federal funding to universities which fail to address the campus antisemitism crisis. The poll also showed strong support for Trump’s policy of deporting campus activists who allegedly express support for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

As for the latest survey published this week, 80 percent of respondents also said that billionaire technologist Elon Musk, head of the US Department of Government Efficiency, inflamed antisemitism with his unapologetic deployment of Holocaust jokes on his X social media platform and calls for Germans to move beyond guilt about the past. Vice President JD Vance also came in for criticism, with 76 percent saying his coziness with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would increase hate against Jews.

The pollsters also found that Jewish attachment to Israel had dropped to levels seen before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist strikes across southern Israel. Following the attack, 82 percent of respondents expressed strong emotional attachment. Sixty-nine percent now hold such views. Generational differences also appeared in the poll’s results, with younger Jews (55 percent for those under 35) describing attachment to Israel while 79 percent of those over 64 did.

Seventy-two percent of those polled also believe that resuming military action in Gaza will make it more likely the hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the Oct. 7 onslaught will die, while the other 28 percent sees further fighting as a path to freeing the hostages.

The survey found Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at 34 percent positive and 61 percent negative, findings which the researchers called “consistent with his favorability ratings over the past five years.” Respondents also expressed similar disagreements over Netanayhu’s true motives for his military policy in Gaza, with 62 believing that he “resumed military action in Gaza for political reasons” while 38 percent regard his choices as driven by a sincere national security analysis.

“When Jews are looking at Israel and thinking about Israel, while they’re very attached to it, it’s very striking how negative the attitudes towards Netanyahu are,” said Jim Gerstein, a founding partner of GBAO Strategies.

“Part of what’s going on is that Jewish voters believe that the actions that the Trump administration is taking, statements that the president is making, statements and actions of others in his administration—that these things actually increase antisemitism,” Gerstein added. “It is very striking that a lot of things that are being done in the name of combating antisemitism, Jews in America actually believe that these things increase antisemitism, instead of reduce antisemitism.”

The survey includes a margin of error of 3.5 percent.

The researchers found that ideology in the Jewish community is divided among 17 percent conservative, 34 percent moderate, and 46 percent liberal.

These cohorts then split into comparable partisan categories. In party identification, 59 percent aligned with the Democrats, 16 percent with the Republicans, and 25 percent rejected political tribalism, embracing an independent political identity. However, when GBAO Strategies pushed the independents to express which party they leaned toward, Democrat support rose to 69 percent, the Republicans increased to 23 percent, and the remaining authentic independents stood at 8 percent.

Jews saw greater unity in their negative view of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who 95 percent found unfavorable. They also expressed strong agreement in opposing making Canada a US state (93 percent), cutting funding for Medicaid (88 percent), taking over Greenland (84 percent), enacting a 145 percent tariff on all goods from China (77 percent), and transferring Palestinians to Arab countries so the US can control Gaza (74 percent).

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