What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: Wartime polls and unexpected conclusions
ToI’s senior analyst sifts through a slew of surveys on perceptions of Hamas, Israel and the day after the war. The results are often counterintuitive
Deputy Editor Amanda Borschel-Dan is the host of The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing and What Matters Now podcasts and heads up The Times of Israel's Jewish World and Archaeology coverage.
Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now.
The past several weeks have seen the publication of a slew of high-profile opinion surveys on the war with Hamas. They include deep looks into the psyche of the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza and a probe into how Israeli Jews and Arabs differ in their perspectives. Out of the United States, there are a few surveys that take the temperature of the American electorate during the war with Hamas.
Among those with findings featured in the podcast is the poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR). Between November 22 and December 2, questions were asked of 1,231 adults, of whom 750 were interviewed face to face in the West Bank and 481 in the Gaza Strip. The findings are eye-opening.
Next, we speak in depth about the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, an online survey within the United States on December 13-14 among 2,034 registered voters. Rettig Gur notes that on several questions, voters in the 18-24 age group seemed to express contradicting or muddled views. He explains why.
We also speak about The New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,016 registered US voters, conducted by telephone from December 10 to 14. With similar, yet different, questions about the war with Hamas, it is interesting to compare findings with the previous survey.
Finally, we discuss the Israel Democracy Institute’s seventh flash survey carried out on December 11–13, with 503 men and women interviewed via the internet and by telephone in Hebrew and 101 in Arabic. The schisms in Israeli society are made crystal clear.
This week on What Matters Now, ToI’s senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur sits down for a frank discussion of some of the polls’ findings in the first of an ongoing series of conversations once every two weeks on varied topical issues.
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