The newest Wisconsin poll highlights stark political divides over the Ukraine and Israel wars

A new Wisconsin poll illustrates how brutal wars involving two U.S. allies are dividing voters here in starkly different ways.  

Broadly speaking, the conflicts involving Ukraine and Israel share one thing in common when it comes to public attitudes.

In each case, a majority of voters favors maintaining U.S. support to America’s allies, and a minority wants to cut back that support.  

But the political fault lines are dramatically different in the two cases.

Aid to Israel draws broader backing from Republicans and conservatives than it does from Democrats and liberals.

The very opposite is true of U.S. support for Ukraine.

Put another way, U.S. support for Israel divides Democratic voters and largely unites Republicans, while U.S. support for Ukraine divides Republican voters and largely unites Democrats.

The fault lines go beyond party. They are also generational and religious, according to the latest statewide poll of Wisconsin voters by the Marquette Law School.

Born-again Protestants are among the groups most supportive of aid to Israel but are among the groups least supportive of aid to Ukraine.

Young voters are among the groups most supportive of aid to Ukraine but are among the groups least supportive of aid to Israel.

How will foreign policy divisions impact the 2024 election?

What are the political implications of these divisions? Could they play a role in the 2024 presidential election?

The polling doesn’t really tell us that.  There is no telling how these wars will play out over the next year.  And presidential campaigns typically don’t turn on foreign policy, especially in the case of conflicts that don’t involve American troops.

At the same time, these are horrifying and consequential wars that are generating sharp debate in Washington and on the campaign trail.

The conflict in the Middle East is clearly fueling higher passions and more discord in the U.S. than the war between Russia and Ukraine, pitting those who sympathize more with Israel against those who sympathize more with Palestinians.  That makes the divisions over Israel among Democrats a potential political challenge for President Joe Biden, who has been very supportive of Israel in the Gaza war in the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas.  

More:Milwaukee supporters of Israel, Palestinians both see horror, but from far different perspectives

The patterns in the polling here are striking for several reasons. They partly reflect a broad partisan role reversal in recent years, with Republicans becoming less eager than Democrats for the U.S. to be engaged or interventionist in world affairs.

In the new poll, voters were asked whether it’s better for the future of the country for the U.S. to take an active part in world affairs or stay out of world affairs.

Republicans were almost evenly divided, with 55% saying “take an active part” and 44% saying “stay out.” By contrast, Democrats overwhelmingly (76%) want the U.S. to take an active part in world affairs.  

But as the survey shows, the debate over America’s international role depends a great deal on the nature of the conflict and the nations involved.   

What voters said in latest Marquette poll

Here is a closer look at public attitudes in the battleground state of Wisconsin toward U.S .support for Israel and Ukraine, based on the new Marquette survey of 908 registered voters taken Oct. 26 to Nov. 2:

When voters were asked if they think the U.S. is providing too much, too little or “about the right amount” of support for Israel in its war with Hamas, 28% said “too much” and 69% said either too little or the right amount.

When voters were asked about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 36% said the U.S. is providing “too much” support while 63% said “too little” or the right amount.

In both cases, opposition to continued levels of American aid is confined to a distinct minority of voters, though that opposition is broader in the case of Ukraine than Israel.

The bigger takeaway here is that discontent with U.S. foreign policy is coming from very different places in the two conflicts.  

Let’s look first at the political fault lines.

A clear majority — 56% — of Republicans in Wisconsin think the U.S. is giving too much support to Ukraine.  Only 12% of Democrats feel that way, according to the poll.  

Meanwhile, only 17% of Republicans think the U.S. is giving too much support to Israel, compared to 36% of Democrats.

The gaps between liberals and conservatives on these issues are even more pronounced.

Almost 6 in 10 conservatives think U.S. support for Ukraine is too high, compared to just 1 in 10 liberals.

That flips with respect to Israel: 43% of liberals think America is giving too much support to Israel, compared to 14% of conservatives.

Finally, consider two other fault lines at work here, which overlap with party and ideology but are also revealing in their own right.

Almost half (48%) of voters under 30 think U.S. support to Israel is too high, which makes this key Democratic-leaning constituency the age group most opposed to American aid in this case. But under-30 voters are the age group least opposed to American support for Ukraine (27%).

The age divide over the conflict in the Middle East is especially striking: the older the group, the more supportive of aid to Israel.  Among voters under 30, 49% think U.S. support is about right or too little; among voters 30-44, it’s 57%; among voters 45-59, it’s 74%, and among voters 60 and over, it’s 81%.

There is also a religious dimension to these differences.

Born-again Protestants are big opponents of aid to Ukraine relative to other groups: 45% think U.S. support is too high (by contrast, only 25% of non-religious voters think US aid to too high).

But born-again Protestants, who have been very pro-Israel in their attitudes, are strong supporters of continued levels of aid to Israel: 77% think U.S. support is the “right amount” or too little; only 21% think it is too high.  

What this means for American domestic politics is tricky to assess for many reasons beyond the unpredictable course of these two conflicts.

One, these wars are generating divisions both between the parties and within the parties.   

Two, it takes an unusual set of circumstances for conflicts in other parts of the world to alter an American election.

Three, it’s unclear in the case of Israel how big a gap there will be between Democrat Biden’s pro-Israel stance and the pro-Israel views of his GOP opponent, who is likely but not certain to be Donald Trump.  

And four, in the case of the Gaza War, the voters most upset right now with U.S. policy under Biden, most critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza and most sympathetic with Palestinians — disproportionately young, disproportionately liberal — are also the kinds of voters with very negative attitudes toward the GOP.