Harvard-Harris Poll: Majority Oppose Biden Withholding Arms from Israel
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
A new Harvard-Harris poll for the month of May confirms data from previous iterations of the poll that suggest roughly 80% of American voters back Israel over the terrorist group Hamas in the ongoing war in Gaza.
The results, emerging from a sample of 1,660 registered voters with a 2% margin of error, replicate the results from the same poll earlier in the year. In the May version, tested in the field from May 15 to 16, the exact numbers were 79% in favor of Israel (as opposed to 80% in April) and 21% in favor of Hamas (as opposed to 20% in the April poll).
Two-thirds (66%) of voters said that there should only be a ceasefire once the remaining Israeli (and American) hostages are released and Hamas has been removed from power. Three-fourths (74%) said Israel should move forward with its operation against Hamas in Rafah — a position at odds with that of the Biden administration.
Moreover, 56% said that President Joe Biden's decision to withhold some arms from Israel “mainly embolden[s] Hamas and backers like Iran to continue the war and violent actions.” Only those 18-24 years old narrowly disagreed.
Similarly, 57% said that they believed “Biden should continue to provide Israel with weapons, even if it enters Rafah.”
On Iran, 78% of registered voters blamed Iran for the ongoing attacks on Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah, and 69% blamed Iran more than Israel for the ongoing violence in the region. Two-thirds (66%) favored sanctions on Iran, rather than negotiations, as a means to convince it to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons; 63% said they would expect Iran to violate any such deal.
The fact that voters appear to oppose Biden administration openly — often by three-to-one margins — suggests that the White House is taking its cues from the vocal, radical “progressive” minority or the anti-Israel campus “encampments” rather than the preferences of the vast majority of the American people.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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