Republicans have long counted on one winning issue in general elections.
But a CNN data analyst just torched that assumption with cold, hard polling numbers.
And what he found has the potential to scramble political calculations heading into the next election cycle.
The Numbers Harry Enten Put on the Board
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten said recently that US voters from both sides of the aisle have soured on Israel, referencing multiple polls confirming a “mammoth” shift in favorability — which Enten suggested could pose a serious problem for the Republican Party. He made his case during an appearance on *News Central* after host John Berman noted Israel has been “one of the key issues” raised by Democrats in recent months.
Enten put it plainly: “There are some absolutely huge mammoth changes, generational changes that we’re talking about.”
He walked through the net favorability numbers across multiple surveys. Ipsos had Israel at minus 10 points. Fox News polling had it at minus 11 points. Marquette University Law School’s poll put it at minus 20 points. Pew Research Center clocked in at minus 23 points. And Gallup, earlier this year, was also negative.
Negative across the board. Every single pollster.
Enten’s conclusion was unambiguous: “We’re not just talking about the Democratic base anymore. We’re talking about the general electorate as well. The general electorate has turned against Israel.”
The GOP Assumption That May No Longer Hold
Enten told viewers that: “I think there are a lot of Republicans, ‘oh, we’ll be able to run against these anti-Israeli Democrats once we hit the general election because the general electorate feels very differently from the Democratic base.'”
But new polling has Republicans worried.
A Washington Post-Ipsos survey conducted between July 8 and July 13 showed that 55% of 2,648 polled US adults believe military aid to Israel should either be reduced or ended entirely.
Enten noted that number doesn’t change much between non-college educated respondents at 51% and those who are college-educated at 62%, showing the problem is widespread across classes. “This isn’t just an issue among white liberals and Democratic primaries. No, no, no, this is true across the educational divide. Even when we are looking towards a general electorate, the majority of Americans believe that military assistance to Israel should either be reduced or ended,” Enten said.
And that is a genuinely significant data point. When the college-educated and non-college-educated agree on something in today’s polarized environment, that tends to reflect something deeper than a news cycle.
Enten put a finer point on it: “This is not just a left issue. It is an American issue when it comes to opinions on Israel.”
What the Generational Shift Actually Means for American Politics
The numbers Enten presented don’t exist in a vacuum. Polling on Israel has been shifting for years, and the conflict in Gaza accelerated a trend that was already underway.
The decline in pro-Israel sentiment appears structural, reflecting decades of generational succession, ideological change, and cultural realignment. The October 7 attacks and their aftermath did not invent the generational break — they made it impossible to ignore.
A 2022 Pew survey found that 55% of Americans had a favorable view of Israel, while 41% had an unfavorable view. But a breakdown of those results reveals key generational differences — only 41% of those aged 18-29 had a favorable view of Israel, compared to 69% of those aged 65 or older.
Those numbers have moved substantially since then, and not in a direction that favors Israel’s standing.
Pew Research Center now reports that 53% of Americans have a negative view of Israel, a stark deterioration from 42% in spring 2022. In just three years, the percentage of Americans with very negative views of Israel has nearly doubled, from 10% to 19%.
The deterioration is bipartisan, though there are differences between the parties. Some 69% of Democrats and those who lean toward the Democrat Party have an unfavorable view of Israel, whereas 37% of Republicans do.
But here is where it gets interesting for anyone trying to read the 2026 and 2028 political landscape.
Among younger voters the partisan differences narrow considerably. Half of Republicans under 50 years of age view Israel negatively, while 71% of Democrats in that age group share that unfavorable view.
David Lazer, distinguished professor of political science at Northeastern University, said: “It’s surprising that it’s in both parties. We know what’s happening in the Democratic Party, but the fact is we’re seeing that incipient change in the Republican Party, too.”
So what does any of this mean for President Trump and the Republican Party going forward? Probably more than most party strategists want to admit right now.
Trump’s America First foreign policy has always prioritized ending foreign entanglements over maintaining indefinite military commitments abroad. The data Enten presented suggests the broader American public — not just the progressive Left — is asking harder questions about the cost and scope of US military assistance to any foreign government. That is not an anti-Israel position so much as a reflection of an electorate that has grown weary of open-ended foreign commitments with no clear exit.
Republicans who plan to campaign in 2026 and 2028 on the assumption that Israel support is a galvanizing general-election issue may want to revisit that strategy. The polling Enten walked through suggests the ground has shifted under that assumption, and it shifted faster than most party insiders anticipated.
And the generational dimension of this shift means it is unlikely to reverse on its own. Younger voters in both parties are less favorable toward Israel than their parents and grandparents, and those voters are not going away. They are becoming a larger share of the electorate with every passing cycle.
Whether that translates into actual policy pressure — on military aid levels, on diplomatic posture, on how candidates talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the campaign trail — remains to be seen. But the data Harry Enten put on the screen is not something Republican strategists can file away and ignore.
The numbers are what they are.
Sources: Mediaite, HuffPost, Yahoo News, Pew Research Center, Washington Post-Ipsos poll (July 8-13), Marquette University Law School poll, Gallup, Northeastern University survey