Israel now a partisan issue, poll finds

Israel has become a deeply partisan issue in the United States, a Bloomberg poll published today finds.

The shift, according to Bloomberg, may carry serious implications for foreign US policy and even domestic politics after decades of general bipartisan consensus.

According to the survey, Republicans believe the US should support Israel even when its stances diverge with American interests by a ratio of more than 2-to-1. Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the US must pursue its own interests over Israel’s.

67% of Republicans say they feel more sympathetic to Prime Minister Netanyahu than to President Obama, (16% say the opposite), while among Democrats 76% are more sympathetic to Obama than to Netanyahu (9% percent).

By a nearly 3-to-1 ratio, Democrats say they are more optimistic than pessimistic that a tentative deal with Iran announced this month will contain Iran’s ability to get nuclear weapons and thus make the world safer. Republicans are more pessimistic than optimistic about the impacts of a deal by a 2-to-1 margin.

A majority of Americans from both parties say any deal with Iran should be subject to congressional approval, and that Iran is an unreliable negotiating partner because it is a religious theocracy, according to the poll.

The survey conducted April 6-8 included 1,008 adults, has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.

Read the full report here.