NEW YORK – Almost twice as many Jewish Americans believe President Joe Biden would be better for the US-Israel relationship than former president Donald Trump, according to the American Jewish Committee’s 2024 Survey of American Jewish Opinion.
Research company SSRS conducted the online survey from March 12 - April 6 with a representative sample of 1,001 Jews ages 18 and older, the AJC said. The participants were overwhelmingly liberal and Reform, it said.
The survey found 49% of the respondents said Biden would be better for the US-Israel relationship, while 25% said Trump would be better.
In the AJC’s 2020 survey, conducted between September and October of that year, 54% of Jewish Americans said Biden would be better at strengthening US-Israel relations, while 42% said Trump would be better.
In this year’s survey, 48% of the respondents approved of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, and 56% approved his job overall as president.
According to the survey, if the election were held today, 61% of American Jews would vote for Biden, and 23% would vote for Trump.
Earlier this year, Trump came under fire from both Jewish and civil-rights groups for saying: “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion, they hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves.”
In his victory speech after the Iowa caucuses, Trump said Israel never would have been attacked if he were president.
Understanding the Jewish vote ahead of 2024 elections
In 2024, as in 2020, more Jewish Americans said Biden would be better than Trump at combating antisemitism, which 93% said is a problem today in the US, according to the survey. The majority of Jewish Americans also said antisemitism in the US had increased after the October 7 terrorist attacks.
Jewish Americans’ connectivity to their Jewish identities and Israel also greatly increased since October 7, and more than three-quarters said it was important for the US to support Israel.
Most American Jews learned about the Jewish people’s historical and religious connections to the land of Israel either in synagogue or religious school, with 85% knowing at least some history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The vast majority of the American Jewish community lacks the education it needs about Israel to process this moment in history adequately, according to the AJC.
Most of the survey’s participants said they felt safe in conversations about the Israel-Hamas war and have not hidden their Jewish identities when meeting someone new. About 12% said they had ended a friendship or relationship because the person expressed antisemitic views, and 13% said they had lost a relationship over disagreements about the war.
According to the survey, 60% of American Jews felt unsafe in at least one of these situations: wearing Jewish symbols in public, spending time in a Jewish institution or building, and/or sharing their views about Israel on social media or with friends.