Poll: Americans Show Impatience with Ukraine War and Shifting Attitudes on Israel

New Critical Issues Poll shows a dip in Americans’ willingness to take on certain costs to support Ukraine, and ambivalence about the Israeli system of government 

A Critical Issues Poll with Ipsos, directed by Department of Government and Politics professors Shibley Telhami and Stella Rouse, finds Americans to be taking a slightly difference stance on major foreign affairs: Americans still express overall support for Ukraine, though patience and pockets are thinning, and are becoming more critical of Israel. 

Some of the most important Ukraine-related findings from the March 27-April 5, 2023 poll comes from a comparison of Americans’ responses to previous Critical Issues Polls.

"After five polls probing the American public's willingness to pay a cost for supporting Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, we found for the first time a measurable decline in the public's readiness to pay a cost,” Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, said. “This seems to be highly correlated with a decline in the assessment that Russia is losing and Ukraine is winning." 

Americans were roughly 10% less willing to take on high energy prices, increased inflation, and risk the loss of U.S. troops in April 2023 than they were in October 2022. Telhami theorizes in a Brookings article that, “Perhaps the realization that there is no end in sight for the war at its first anniversary was sobering to some,” but also notes that this cost-related dip in willingness could be explained by the fact that in April 2023, just 37% of Americans expressed that Russia is losing (down from 48% in October) and just 26% said that Ukraine is succeeding (down from 43% in October).

“ … the degree of support for Ukraine is highly correlated with the public’s evaluation of Ukraine winning or Russia losing,” Telhami wrote. “In the October poll, we noted stories stressing Ukrainian successes and Russian failures, which may have accounted for higher confidence in the outcome.”

Americans’ assessment of who is winning and who is losing the Ukraine-Russia conflict may also be impacting the amount of time Americans are willing to commit to the cause. As of April 2023, there’s only an 8-point difference between the share of Americans who want to support Ukraine for as long as it takes (38%) and the share of Americans who only want the U.S. to support Ukraine for another 1-2 years (46%). 

This difference was especially pronounced between Republicans and Democrats. The majority (62%) of Republican respondents said they wanted to stay the course for one to two years, whereas the majority (51%) of Democrat respondents said they wanted to stay the course for as long as it takes.

Key differences between Republicans and Democrats were also observed in the poll’s questions about the Palestinian-Israeli issue.  

More than half of respondents overall answered “I don’t know” to the poll’s question about whether they believe Israel is a vibrant democracy, a flawed democracy, a state with restricted minority rights, or a state with segregation similar to apartheid. 

“Typically, on matters of opinion, respondents often answer even when they don’t fully know the issue. All this suggests that there is a level of discomfort among respondents in answering this question,” Telhami wrote in another Brookings article. 

However, among those who did otherwise respond to this question, their answers differed significantly by party. Forty-four percent of Democrats described Israel as “a state with segregation similar to apartheid,” and 34% as “a flawed democracy.” On the flip side, four in 10 Republicans described Israel as “a vibrant democracy,” and just two in 10 as “a state with segregation similar to apartheid.”

Similarly, when respondents were asked for their view on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, 65% said they were either unfamiliar or that they didn’t know. But, among those who did respond otherwise, there was again a marked difference between Republicans and Democrats: 65% of Republican respondents who expressed an opinion said they opposed BDS, whereas only 20% of Democrats said they opposed the BDS movement and 41% said they supported it.

According to Telhami, these findings indicate that although there has been very little change in the number of Americans who want the United States to lean toward Israel (compared to past poll questions, and a decrease that is mostly within the margin of error), shifts in opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict are still occurring.

“It is clear that public attitudes about Israel are shifting,” Telhami wrote. “The term ‘apartheid’ appears to have become a common term among many Americans, especially Democrats, and even the BDS movement, which has faced considerable obstacles in the American mainstream, seems to have sizable support among Democrats who expressed their opinion.”

Photo of Israel and Ukraine flags by Viacheslav Chernobrovin is from iStock

Published on Wed, May 3, 2023 - 1:59PM