By Paul A. Djupe, Data for Political Research

There’s a teach-in about Palestine tomorrow in Knobel Hall at 5pm that you may be interested in. When I saw this, I realized that we had some new data about how students were feeling toward thost most invested in these questions and the current conflict. I’m taking a break from grading to share a few results and show where the deepest divides are. The data come from a survey of 400+ students earlier this month.

The survey asked how warmly student respondents felt toward “Pro-Palestinian Protestors” and toward “Pro-Israel Protestors.” The results, shown below, show not a lot of warmth toward the Pro-Israel group, but a campus divided over the Palestinian side as well. The strongest concentration of attitudes is right in the middle, though with on balance more positive views than negative.

In the mass public, the group most vocally in favor of the Palestinians are on the left, while essentially everyone else is backs Israel. Can we see the same distribution on campus? The figure below shows the mean score toward the two groups of protestors (red=Palestinian, blue=Israel) for each ideological identification asked in the survey. And it’s clear that more pro-Palestinian sentiment lies on the left of the spectrum and in exactly the way it’s arrayed in the mass public. The far left shows the most polarization followed by progressives and then liberals. Everyone else, from the alt-right to conservatives, are about evenly split with a slight lean toward Israel among the more conservative identifications.

The partisan split mirrors the ideological pattern, though shows a bit less polarization but also clearer signals. This is interesting because Democratic elected officials, aside from the most left-leaning, have not been stridently pro-Palestinian. Republicans have been the most stridently pro-Israel, though, so their polarization makes sense.

This is not taking into account (race and ) ethnicity, of course, and that is poised to potentially make a difference in the 2024 election. Muslims in Michigan already sent a signal of dissatisfaction in their primary votes. However, the Biden Administration just rolled out a new rule to include a checkbox for Middle Eastern/North African descent in the US Census. This is actually a big deal since Census data are how lots of federal programs are distributed. Tracking how policies affect MENA identifiers serves to raise the representation of this growing group of Americans. It remains to be seen if this policy shift helps mend rifts with the Muslim community, but it potentially brings them back into the fold and works to sever a connection with the left that has never been happy with the Biden Administration.

Paul A. Djupe is a currently hobbled local cyclist who runs the Data for Political Research minor. He started onetwentyseven.blog a few years ago in a bid to subsidize collective action and spread accurate knowledge about campus and what goes on there. He also writes about religion and politics in the US.