According to the survey, Kamala Harris is perceived as less “pro-Israel” than Joe Biden, and J.D. Vance is less pro-Israel than Donald Trump.

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Main Findings

• Kamala Harris is perceived as less “pro-Israel” than Joe Biden; J.D. Vance as less pro-Israel than Donald Trump.
• There is a significant gap between Biden and Trump voters in how they understand recent political developments in Europe and their implications for Jews.
• Over half of respondents (nearly two-thirds) are donating more to American Jewish organizations since October 7.
• The percentage of conservatives who think Israel will win the war is higher than the percentage of liberals who think so.
• Respondents have greater confidence in Israel’s ability to win than Israeli Jews.
• The sense of personal security among American Jews has not changed significantly, even since the academic year ended.
• Optimism about Israel’s future is higher than optimism levels regarding the future of the Jewish people or U.S. Jewry.
• The closer a group is to (political and religious) conservativism, the greater its optimism about the future of the Jews and of Israel.
• Even non-affiliated and liberal respondents largely feel that it is better for Jewish children to study in Jewish schools.

A general note about the survey time period: The data was gathered between July 16 and July 20. These dates are important due to the dense cluster of events in the past few weeks. The survey was conducted after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and after his selection of J.D. Vance as a running mate, but before Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, and before it became clear that Kamala Harris would top the Democratic ticket. Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Washington was expected but had not yet taken place when the data was collected, meaning that his address to Congress and the subsequent meetings had no effect on the responses.

Who Is Pro-Israel?

As part of a series of questions on the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, we looked at how respondents feel about the candidates’ views on Israel. Like last month, we asked whether the presidential candidates are “pro-Israel” or not, but this month, in addition to asking about the candidates themselves (then Biden and Trump), we also included questions about vice presidential candidates – J.D. Vance for the Republican Party, and Kamala Harris for the Democrats (who has since become the presumptive presidential candidate, possibly conferring added importance to the question about her).

The more interesting comparison is not between the two parties’ presidential candidates, as respondents ranked them largely in accordance with their political orientations (that is, Democrats rank the Democratic candidates as more pro-Israel while Republicans rank their candidates), but rather between each party’s two respective candidates – especially given the turnover in the Democratic ticket. Overall, both Biden and Trump voters think that Harris is less pro-Israel than Biden.

The respondent panel, across the political and ideological board, regards vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance as less pro- Israel than Trump. This month’s survey found that panel participants essentially assert that, in the transition from the older leadership generation (Biden and Trump) to the younger leadership generation (Harris and Vance), there is a decline in “pro-Israel” sentiment. Of course, this does not necessarily apply to all future candidates, but in this election cycle, the intergenerational transition presages for Israel (if the assessment of American Jews is to be relied upon) a more complex relationship with the U.S. leadership.

It should be noted that compared with last month’s Voice of the Jewish People survey, this month’s survey found an increase in both the share of respondents who think Trump is pro-Israel and in the share of those who think Biden is pro-Israel. These views may have been influenced by the fact that in the presidential debate as well as other political gatherings, both Biden and Trump expressed support for Israel with no particular emphasis on disagreements (which had been emphasized in the past).

U.S.-Israel Relations

In recent months, a consistent disparity could be discerned between the liberal and the conservative poles of American Jewry in their assessment of U.S. support for Israel. On the liberal end of the spectrum, the percentage of respondents who feel that U.S. support for Israel is sufficient is trending upward.

This month’s Voice of the Jewish People survey was conducted during the Republican National Convention, and immediately after the selection of J.D. Vance as Donald Trump’s running mate. The data analysis compared those intending to vote for Biden and those planning to vote for Trump. But the survey also included a few questions directly pertaining to Kamala Harris (who, at the time the survey was conducted, was still the vice-presidential candidate, but who is now the presidential candidate). These questions looked at the level of her support for Israel and her ability to fight antisemitism.

In light of the November U.S. presidential elections, panel respondents were asked for whom they plan to vote and to indicate their degree of certainty about their choices. Last month, we noted that those who said they will definitely be voting for Biden tended to feel that U.S. support for Israel was adequate, while those who said they would likely vote for Biden but weren’t entirely certain, or who thought they would likely vote for Trump, said that the U.S. does not support Israel enough. This trend persisted in July as well.

The data shows that even following the June Biden-Trump debate, in whose wake claims against Biden’s fitness to run for president gained critical mass (ultimately leading to his withdrawal), no major change occurred in the share of panel participants intending to vote for Biden. If anything, respondents who self-identify as “centrist” evinced a continued upward trend in the share who will “definitely” vote for Biden (next month we will be able to determine whether this trend has continued with Kamala Harris’s entrance into the race).

Attachment to Israel

We have examined attachment to Israel several times since October 7. A multi-month comparison shows that, compared with the start of the war, Jews who self-identify as “conservative” and “centrist” have felt a consistent sense of attachment to Israel. Among the liberal cohorts, however, there has been an erosion of the sense of commitment to Israel since the start of the war. The July survey found that nearly a third (29%) of “strong liberal” respondents said the war has distanced them from Israel.

Most respondents on the Voice of the Jewish People panel said that October 7 had caused them to donate more to American Jewish organizations than in the past. This finding appears across the entire political spectrum, and likely reflects the impact of fundraising for Israel’s wartime needs, and perhaps also American Jewry’s mobilization on behalf of organizations that work to counter antisemitism and anti- Israel sentiment in the U.S.

JPPI’s Israeli Society Index survey examines on a near- monthly basis the degree of confidence among Israelis (Jews and non-Jews) in Israel’s ability to win the war. Compared to the Israeli survey findings, we see that a sizeable share of the American Jewish respondent panel expresses a higher degree of confidence that Israel will win the war.

These higher confidence levels are found even when the American Jews are compared with a representative sample of Jewish Israelis alone. However, this finding comes with a caveat: even after the data is weighted, the Voice of the Jewish People respondent panel comprises Jews who are relatively “connected” to Israel and to the Jewish community, and does not represent the views of American Jewry writ large. When the American panel data is sorted by political orientation, we find that most conservatives and centrists are convinced that Israel will win the war (rating of 5), while liberal respondents are less convinced.

The Jewish Future

As part of the survey, we tried to assess the panel participants’ degree of optimism about three spheres of Jewish life: the American Jewish community, world Jewry as a whole, and the State of Israel.

Regarding the future of world Jewry, the further right one moves along the liberal-conservative axis, the higher the share of optimists. A similar trend can be seen on the religiosity scale as well – the closer a religious subgroup is to the Orthodox streams, the more optimistic it is about the future of world Jewry.

When respondents were asked to rate their degree of optimism about the future of the American Jewish community, the survey found lower levels of optimism compared to the future of the Jewish people worldwide. Additionally, those who self-identify as “strong conservatives” are relatively pessimistic about the future of American Jewry. In this group, the percentage of those “not at all optimistic” about the future of American Jewry is significantly higher than in other groups, and double the percentage of conservatives who expressed pessimism regarding the future of world Jewry.

Panel participants are more optimistic about the State of Israel’s future than they are about the future of both world Jewry and American Jewry. For this question too, the more conservative the respondent, the higher the optimism level. A similar trend can be seen when one looks at religiosity level – the more religiously observant the respondent, the more optimistic they are. Additionally, those who have visited Israel more than once or have lived there are somewhat more optimistic than those who have never visited Israel or have visited only once.

Overall, the optimism levels of American panel participants are lower in regard to the future of American Jewry than the future of the Jewish people as a whole, including Israel. When the data is weighted by choice of each rating on the 1-5 scale we see a rise in optimism about the future of world Jewry and Israel compared to optimism about the future of the American Jewish community. The outlier is the “strong liberal” group, whose degree of optimism regarding Israel is the lowest of all the groups, although not to a significant degree.

Sense of Security

The sense of security among American Jews has not changed substantially since the end of the academic year and the concomitant drop in the incidence and intensity of anti- Israel demonstrations. The sense of decreased security is quite similar to what has been evident since the war started, and there are no significant differences between respondents of differing ideologies or degrees of religiosity. Among the strong liberals, 40% say that their sense of security has been compromised, and we find a similar percentage among strong conservatives – 37%. Among Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox respondents, the percentages of those who feel less secure are nearly identical.

The Fight Against Antisemitism

This month’s Voice of the Jewish People survey included a series of questions pertaining to antisemitism. We wanted to examine respondents’ perceptions about from which political direction more manifestations of antisemitism emanate, and which of the presidential candidates would better confront them. The data shows that most respondents who said they would vote for Biden believe that antisemitism is coming equally from the extreme right and the extreme left, while most of those who said they would vote for Trump believe that manifestations of antisemitism are coming mainly from the far-left.

As more or less expected, liberal respondents believe that Biden would be more effective in combating antisemitism, while conservative respondents believe that Trump is better suited to address this challenge. Given the changes to the Democratic presidential ticket, it is interesting to see that an identical question about Kamala Harris (in place of Biden) elicited quite similar responses (with a slight advantage to Biden over Harris).

Political Trends in Europe

Most Biden voters on the respondent panel believe that the strengthening of the far-right in France (even though they ultimately did not win the elections) is a danger to French Jews, despite the fact that the far-right National Rally party expresses support for Israel less reservedly than the centrist and left-wing parties. By contrast, half of those planning to vote for Trump feel that the rise of the far-right is preferable to the alternative, due to its support for Israel. Nearly a quarter of the respondents did not know how to answer this question.

A question about the rise to power of Britain’s Labour Party brought similar results. Most Trump voters believe that the Labour Party is too critical of Israel and, therefore, not good for the Jews.

There was a disparity among those that had planned to vote for Biden. Those who said they would definitely vote for Biden tended to think that Labour is friendly to the Jews, while those who said they would “likely” (though not definitely) be voting for Biden tended to say that Labour is too critical of Israel and would not be good for the Jews.

Jewish Education in the United States

In the July survey we looked at whether the panel participants have changed their views about education in Jewish schools versus public schools in the United States. Under the circumstances that emerged after October 7, both the conservatives and the liberals who changed their views changed them in the direction of stronger support for Jewish schools. The most intriguing change took place among Jews who self- identify as “leaning liberal” or “centrist” and who belong to the Conservative religious stream or who are not affiliated with any religious stream (“No stream”). Of these, a fifth had changed their opinion and now feel that “it’s better for U.S. Jews to study in Jewish schools.”

Survey Data and its Implications

This report is an analysis of a survey administered to 536 American Jews registered for JPPI’s Voice of the Jewish People panel. The report does not provide a weighted figure that represents the views of American Jewry as a whole, but the number of survey participants who self-identify as belonging to various groups enables us to identify trends, views, and differences between Jews based on religious affiliation, emotional attachment to Israel, political orientation, attachment to Judaism, and more. Roughly speaking, it can be said that this survey tends to reflect the attitudes of U.S. Jews with some connection to the Jewish community, as indicated by a specific question in this regard (which includes data on anyone who stated a connection to some Jewish institution, such as a synagogue, community center, Jewish organization, etc.), as well as of Jews with an attachment of some kind to Israel, as reflected in the data on participant visits to Israel, which are significantly more numerous than the average for all US Jews.

Data on survey participants (see adjacent table): About half self-identify as liberals; the percentage of respondents in mixed marriages is significantly lower than the average for the US Jewish community; the percentage of those affiliated with Conservative Judaism is higher than the percentage among all American Jews. The share of those unaffiliated with any religious stream is substantially lower than for American Jewry in general. Politically, the participants in this month’s survey lean conservative to a greater degree than in the surveys for previous months.