How deep is the divide among Democrats over Israel?

Nine months after the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel, the war drags on and with it the divide within the Democratic Party over the war. Some see this divide as having serious consequences for the 2024 elections, possibly affecting the outcome in Michigan (a swing state with a large Arab-American community) and affecting the votes of young people, who protested on campus against U.S. support for Israel and whose feelings toward Israel are not as warm as those of other, older generations. The extent to which splits within the Democratic Party over Israel will influence the upcoming congressional and presidential elections is unknown, but with over half of the 2024 primaries out of the way, the results indicate that far-left positions on the war are both rare among candidates and unpopular with Democratic voters.

An example took place on June 25, when Representative Jamaal Bowman became the first Democratic incumbent of 2024 to lose his primary, a loss widely attributed to his early and fervent anti-Israel stance and the heavy participation by AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) in support of his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer. Bowman went so far as to accuse Israel of genocide—an incendiary term when applied to a nation of Jews whose memories of the Holocaust are deep and powerful and a move that risked alienating the Jewish population in his district. Bowman’s defeat was substantial; at time of publication, he was losing to Latimer by nearly 17 percentage points.

At Brookings, we have spent the past several months working on the Primaries Project—our fifth comprehensive study of people running for Congress in both parties. By systematically analyzing all Democratic and Republican candidates’ backgrounds and policy positions, we aim to better understand intraparty divisions on a variety of issues, including Israel. We look at candidates’ websites, voting patterns (for incumbents), social media posts, and news interviews (where they exist) and use this information to assign each candidate a numerical code corresponding to their position on each issue. So far, we have coded over 1,400 candidates across 30 states.

Table 1 shows where Democrats running for Congress (to date) stand on Israel. The largest number, 270 or 45%, didn’t mention Israel at all in their campaign materials. Bowman’s position—accusing Israel of committing genocide and/or saying that the U.S. must stop support for the war—is the most extreme and is held by just seven percent of all Democratic candidates. Not surprisingly, these 45 candidates came from congressional districts that are heavily Democratic and liberal, with an average Cook PVI of D+10.  

Eighteen percent of the Democratic candidates took a more moderate position, saying that the U.S. should make support for Israel conditional and call for a ceasefire. The next group is probably closest to where the Biden administration is—continuing to support Israel while supporting humanitarian aid for Gaza; 17% of Democratic congressional candidates fell into that category. Thirteen percent fell into the final category: unconditional support for Israel.

The final column in Table 1 shows how the candidates in each category performed. The candidates with the most anti-Israel positions represented just two percent of primary winners, while those who supported a ceasefire and conditions on aid made up 22%. The two most pro-Israel categories together constituted 42% of the winners.

The picture is dramatically different among Republican Congressional candidates. Fully 50% of the candidates (91% of those who mentioned the issue) and a large majority of those who won their primaries expressed unconditional support for Israel. A handful of Republicans advocated for an end to U.S. support for the war—this position was usually coupled with opposition to Ukraine aid and support for broader isolationist policies. Almost no Republican candidates took the more nuanced positions in the middle.

What can we make of these findings? On the Democratic side, the winning candidates in the primaries are primarily pro-Israel with some who would like to see the U.S. try to enforce a ceasefire. However, the extreme left-wing position, the one most often heard in the demonstrations on college campuses, is neither well-represented in the field of candidates nor popular with Democratic primary voters. This is demonstrated by the low rates of electoral success for anti-Israel candidates and punctuated by Bowman’s defeat. There is a divide in the Democratic Party, but the anti-Israel candidates compose only 2% of the primary winners. Outside of the most extreme position, the party is split fairly evenly, with most candidates displaying sympathy for Israel, but hesitancy to voice full-throated, unconditional support. On the Republican side, there is no such ambiguity, with more than half expressing support for unconditional aid to Israel. What is clear, however, is that Democratic congressional candidates and Democratic primary voters, while their views are more nuanced, are not as far left on this issue as was Jamaal Bowman and a handful of others who supported him.