A view of a US flag and an Israeli flag. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

A new YouGov survey suggests that Americans continue to view Israel as a strategic partner of the United States, with the public significantly more likely to see the interests of the two countries as aligned than opposed despite ongoing political debates over the Middle East.

According to the June 10 poll, 41 percent of Americans believe US and Israeli interests are aligned, including 19 percent who say they are “mostly aligned” and 22 percent who say they are “somewhat aligned.” By comparison, 25 percent say the interests of the two countries are “opposed,” while 14 percent believe they are neither aligned nor opposed and 20 percent are unsure.

The findings indicate that Americans are substantially more likely to view Israel, the Middle East’s lone democracy, as advancing common strategic objectives with the United States than as working against American interests. Supporters of the alliance point to decades of intelligence sharing, military cooperation, joint missile-defense initiatives, and close coordination against regional threats, particularly Iran and its network of allied terrorist groups.

Beneath the national numbers, however, the survey reveals significant partisan differences.

Republicans remain the strongest supporters of the US-Israel relationship, with a clear majority of 62 percent viewing the interests of the two countries as aligned and 10 percent viewing American and Israeli interests as opposed. The results reflect a longstanding trend in which Republican voters have consistently expressed some of the highest levels of support for Israel among major political constituencies in the United States.

Democrats, while more divided, still include a substantial bloc that sees common interests between Washington and Jerusalem. Twenty-nine percent of Democrats believe that American and Israeli interests are aligned. At the same time, 36 percent Democratic respondents said the two countries do not share aligned interests. The findings highlight ongoing debates within the Democratic Party over American policy toward Israel, particularly in the aftermath of recent conflicts in the Middle East.

Independent voters fell between the two major parties, with 32 percent indicating that the US and Israel share aligned interests and 29 percent stating that the two countries have oppositional interests, reflecting broader divisions among voters who do not identify strongly with either party.

Even with those partisan differences, the poll suggests that support for the broader strategic relationship extends beyond any single political coalition. Americans overall remain more likely to see the two nations as partners than as adversaries, with those viewing the relationship positively outnumbering those who see conflicting interests by a margin of 16 percentage points.

The survey comes at a time of heightened regional tensions and renewed attention to the US role in the Middle East. For advocates of the US-Israel alliance, the findings offer evidence that, despite growing political polarization and intense public debate, a plurality of Americans continue to believe that the security and strategic interests of the United States and Israel largely move in the same direction.