Poll: New York Dems side with Mamdani on Israel, Netanyahu

The IMEU’s Policy Project, founded in 2024, has paid for several studies of the Democratic electorate’s Israel views, previously conducted by YouGov.

During that year’s election, they found that then-nominee Kamala Harris could win votes by supporting an “arms embargo” on Israel, which the nominee did not do. In January, they found that 29% of voters who backed Joe Biden in 2020 abandoned Harris over her “administration’s support for Israel’s genocide.” (The group switched from YouGov to DFP because of DFP’s experience polling New York City specifically.)

“Support for blocking bombs to Israel, recognizing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and holding Israel accountable for its violations of the law is not simply the opinion of the majority of Democratic voters,” said DeReus. “It is the vast, vast majority, and any Democrat who stands with [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee] instead of their own voters is running the real risk of getting voted out of office.”

Other pollsters have found overlapping trends, as Democrats have grown more supportive of the Palestinians’ cause and more critical of Israel. In 2023, for the first time, Gallup found that more Democrats’ “sympathies” were with the Palestinians, by an 11-point margin. In a poll released this year, the gap had grown to 38 points.

Data like that was encouraging to Mamdani’s campaign, which navigated a series of news cycles about his criticism of Israel, from his support for arresting Netanyahu to his initial refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.” Though he’s cleared the Democratic primary, he still faces a packed November election against Mayor Eric Adams, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, and independent Jim Walden.

IMEU’s polling, like most polling during the election, found that voters prioritized issues like housing costs and education over candidates’ stances on the war in Gaza. Just 27% of Democrats said that “relations with Israel” played a role in their vote.

“I was more surprised at how people were treating Mamdani for the whole election than by the results of our poll,” said Ryan O’Donnell, DFP’s executive director. “Mamdani was the one candidate largely in line with Democrats’ opinions.”

Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said she was “not shocked” by the polling.” Her group endorsed Mamdani as soon as he entered the race; Miller personally volunteered as a canvasser for Mamdani’s campaign, where she found that “Zohran’s support for Palestinian rights was a pull for a lot of people,” including many young Jewish voters.

“Democrats should pay very close attention, and act accordingly, by ending US support for this genocide,” Miller said. “Someone like Chuck Schumer, someone like Hakeem Jeffries, someone like [New York Rep.] Dan Goldman — “they have voted to send more arms to Israel as it slaughters and starves Palestinians in Gaza, and that must end.”

Some progressives have already discussed challenges to Jeffries and Goldman, after Mamdani carried their districts. Usamah Andrabi, the communications director of Justice Democrats, said that “these results should wake Democrats up to just how out of touch AIPAC has paid them to be with their own voters.”

Marshall Wittman, AIPAC’s spokesman, said that the polling from New York mattered less than election results outside the five boroughs.

“One hundred percent of AIPAC-backed Democrats won their primary last cycle, and the prominent anti-Israel Democratic incumbents lost,” said Wittman. “Over 95% of AIPAC-backed Democrats won their election in November. Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics.”

Brian Romick, the new president of Democratic Majority for Israel, told Semafor that “the primary electorate in New York City is not reflective of the Democratic Party, let alone the nation as a whole, and we think people would be wise to not draw too many knee-jerk reactions to it.” Just last year, high-profile Israel critics lost primaries, and the “solidly pro-Israel Democratic Party platform” reflected where the party stood.

“Of course people have sympathy for Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” he said. “It’s Hamas that doesn’t have any sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people. If they did, they would accept the ceasefire, release the hostages, and end the war.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition, meanwhile, viewed the poll as a credible CAT scan of what Democrats truly believe.

“This poll should shake every Jewish New Yorker to their core,” said Sam Markstein, the RJC’s spokesman. “Democrats’ leaders have appeased, enabled, and embraced this hostility to the Jewish state rather than have the courage and moral clarity to stand against it. There is only one pro-Israel party, and it is the Republican Party.”

There are few issues on which the opinions of Democratic voters stray further from their party than continued military support for Israel. (O’Donnell told me that only “Medicare for All” comes close.) Pro-Israel Democrats have sounded the alarms about this, fretting that the continuation of the war — the constant, grisly images from Gaza, the literal gifts Netanyahu keeps handing Donald Trump — is making it even harder for them.

That doesn’t mean that every campaign will turn on Israel. But Democrats are starting to reckon with how much their base, at least, wants to stop arming Israel. Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed can describe what’s happening in Gaza as “genocide,” and know that there’s a victory-sized bloc of primary voters who will agree with him. And Jeffries and other pro-Israel Democrats have condemned “the starvation and death” of Gazans, in an effort to get in line with a base that is horrified by the war.