Tracking 'American support for Israel' stats is a habit of ours, and since we do it with the assistance of notable pollster Prof. Camil Fuchs, we feel quite confident that it is properly done. Today we updated our Israel Favorability page on J-Meter, and we highly recommend that you take a look at Fuchs' new graph from which the following question arises: why have Israel's favorability numbers recently declined by 5%, while its “unfavorable” numbers have climbed by 5% in the same time period?
You think you have an answer? Well, we don't; and we're not certain yet if the new number is a warning sign of a beginning of a new trend or just regular fluctuation in Israel's numbers. Last December, in a PEW survey, Israel's numbers didn't seem to be changing, as you can see here:
There's a difference, though, between the polls that we usually track and the one conducted by PEW: this one examines the 'Israelis vs. Palestinians' question and checks which of the two gets more American sympathy. The polls that we track on our Israel Favorability index deal more directly with the way Israel is viewed, so comparisons between the two types of questions can be tricky. As we saw in previous installments of our own index, not even questions about Israel being an “ally” provide results identical to those on Israel being “favorable” (or “unfavorable”).
Anyway, here's your chance to take a look at this new graph of Israel Favorability.
