No, Gallup Did Not Find 65% of Democrats Sympathize With Palestinians — The Real Number Is Lower

A claim circulating online states that a Gallup survey found 65 percent of Democrats sympathize more with Palestinians compared to just 17 percent who sympathize more with Israelis. The verdict is partially false. The directional trend is real — Democratic sympathy for Palestinians has grown — but the specific numbers are wrong.

Gallup's most recent relevant survey, conducted in March 2024, found that 49% of Democrats sympathized more with Palestinians and 38% with Israelis. An earlier February 2023 Gallup poll produced the same 49%-to-38% split. Neither survey comes close to the 65%/17% figures in the claim. Gallup's full historical archive of Middle East sympathy polling, which stretches back decades, contains no published result matching those numbers for Democrats as a whole.

Pew Research Center data from 2023 does show higher Palestinian sympathy among liberal Democrats specifically — a subgroup, not all Democrats. That distinction matters. It is possible the 65%/17% figures come from a subgroup breakdown, a different polling organization, or a misremembered or misattributed result. Whatever the source, attributing those numbers to Gallup and to Democrats broadly is not supported by the evidence.

To be fair to the claim's core point: the shift in Democratic opinion is genuine and well-documented. Gallup's longitudinal data shows Palestinian sympathy among Democrats has risen substantially over the past decade. The problem is not the trend — it is the inflation of the numbers, which makes the divide look more dramatic than the data actually shows.

This kind of numerical distortion spreads easily because the underlying story feels plausible. When a statistic confirms something people already believe about political polarization, they share it without checking the source. Watch for claims that cite a well-known pollster like Gallup without linking directly to the poll, or that report suspiciously round or extreme numbers — those are signals to verify before passing it on.