Foreign Policy Has Become A Family Feud
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Leah and I met for the first time ever in person this weekend. We did. She was thrust into the middle of like a quick brunch with my friends from college. They were kind of like what I imagine people who have like a group of friends in New York to be. They were cool. Cooler than me. I mean, what else would you expect? Come on.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk, and we are back on the campaign trail this week with the South Carolina Republican primary on Saturday. According to our averages, former President Trump leads former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley by 30 points in her home state.

Nonetheless, Haley gave a speech on Tuesday in which she insisted that she's staying in the race well beyond South Carolina and amped up her criticism of Trump, particularly on his stance on Russia. So we'll get into what we should expect on Saturday. And on the topic of Russia, today we're going to talk about the complicated politics of foreign policy within both parties.

and why it's led to a standstill in Congress. This week, Haley said that, quote, Trump is siding with a dictator who kills his political opponents, highlighting a split within the GOP over how to deal with Putin and whether to send military aid to Ukraine.

On the other side of the aisle, progressives have been increasingly critical of Biden's support of Israel and the war in Gaza. Democratic Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib is now urging Michiganders to vote uncommitted in next week's Democratic primary in protest.

We'll look at where public opinion stands within the two parties and how that compares with the nation as a whole. And we've got a good or bad use of polling example for you today, tackling the question of presidential greatness. Here with me to kick things off, our senior elections analyst, Jeffrey Skelly. Hey, Jeff. Hey there, Galen. Also here with us is politics reporter Leah Escar. And welcome to the podcast, Leah. Hello. Hello.

Later on in the show, we're also going to be joined by a public opinion researcher from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. But we're going to kick things off with South Carolina. We've had almost a month of no blockbuster primaries. We've had

An irrelevant caucus here, an irrelevant primary there. But now eyes are turning towards South Carolina. Trump leads in our averages with about 63% support to Haley's 33% support in the Palmetto State.

So, Jeff, you've characterized South Carolina as your second home state, of course, Virginia being your first. You got a lot of family there, some roots in the state. How would you characterize this race? Are we looking at things from an academic perspective at this point in terms of, you know, like who turns out whether there's crossover voting and the likes? Yeah.

I mean, to be sure, there are lots of interesting little wrinkles, such as the fact that South Carolina is an open primary state with no party registration. So in theory, a lot of people who may not identify as Republicans could participate if they wanted to. I don't think it's going to be a particularly large percentage of the electorate, to be clear. Basically, in recent primaries in South Carolina on the Republican side,

70, 75% of the voters have identified as Republican. So I think that's kind of a signal that you're going to have mostly people who are Republicans participating in this primary. So even if that percentage is like 65% this time who are Republicans and you have a few more non-Republicans, either independents or even some Democrats participating, that's

Trump dominates with Republicans, self-identified Republicans. So it's understandable why he has such a big edge there. So I do – I think there are questions. Maybe the largest question is sort of –

Does Nikki Haley do well enough or does she not even care that much about how the result turns out when it comes to whether or not she stays in the race? I would say that is actually the most sort of the biggest question and one that I don't think is particularly easy to answer because she has been very vocal about, I'm sticking in this race. At the same time, though, if she loses by 30 points in her home state, I also would not be shocked if she came out on stage on Saturday night and said, it's been a good run. Thank you, South Carolina. I'm done.

Interesting. After Tuesday's speech, I would be kind of surprised. I mean, she laid down some benchmarks that were like, after the primary on Saturday, I will still be in the race on Sunday and well beyond that. I think she even said, I'll be in until the last person votes. I don't know if she actually meant until June because she was mostly talking about staying in through Super Tuesday. But I think at this point, I would actually be shocked if she got out on stage and got out of the race on Sunday. Yeah.

All right. Maybe I should adjust that to Sunday or Monday after she finds out that it's going to be really hard to continue raising money after losing by 30 points in South Carolina. To be clear, maybe it'll be closer than that. But I think basically the largest recent notable polling error in presidential primaries was in 2016 in Michigan when Bernie Sanders was down by 21 points in Michigan but ended up winning by like one and a half or so. So you had basically about a 23-point gap.

Polling error, which was a really big deal. Well, Haley is down by 30 points in South Carolina, so she needs like almost 50% more, like a 50% larger polling error than Sanders had in his win to win. So I'm thinking it's pretty unlikely. Yeah.

That she's going to win. And pretty unlikely that it even is going to be all that. It could even be considered close. If we're going to use like New Hampshire as a benchmark where Trump won by 11 or something, you know, that might be as close as you could even conceivably imagine it. And even then, that would be a shock, I think.

Leo, what are you going to be watching for on Saturday night? Well, I'd like to see if she gets any delegates. What's tricky about where she is in the race right now is

we can't use a conventional measurement for whether or not she's staying in, because what I would normally do is say, "Is there a path to victory?" And I mean, in terms of the actual number of delegates left, sure, if there's a massive change in the trajectory of the race, it's not mathematically impossible, but it's also, as things stand in this race, nearly impossible.

So I'm curious if she gets any delegates. It's South Carolina is a winner-take-all state with a few different categories. So it's not like if she gets a majority in a single congressional district, it's not like she gets a majority in a single congressional district.

that would give her a few delegates. But more than that, I think I'm looking at how the primary states on Super Tuesday and a kind of a national polling respond to the outcome in South Carolina. So at this point, she's burning through money, but is she burning through her reputation? And the polling that we've seen today

Indicates that she's still, you know, her numbers are still right side up. In other words, the percentage of voters who have a favorable opinion of her is higher than those who have a negative opinion of her. So if she's amongst Republicans, but actually, I mean, among voters in general in the Suffolk whole of South Carolina nationally, I think she is upside down.

But if she can maintain staying right side up among Republicans, it's like,

Like the spotlight is on her and it might not hurt to have her continue to kind of introduce herself to the country, especially if Trump loses in the general election. You know, that kind of positions her for a leadership position or at least a symbolic leadership position in the Republican Party if Trump loses in November.

Yeah, Leah, I think there's a lot to say in terms of what Nikki Haley might hope to get out of staying in the race, given that her path to the nomination in any sort of conventional sense, you know, by winning most of the state's

seems to be definitely not the path that she's on right now. And we're going to talk a lot more about that on Saturday night because we are going to have a late night podcast. We're reacting to the results in South Carolina. So make sure listeners to tune in on Sunday. But for right now, I do want to key in on a couple more things, which is

You know, what does the electorate look like in South Carolina? You know, in Iowa, we talked about it's a very tiny electorate of people who end up going to the caucus on the Republican side. It's quite evangelical. In New Hampshire, it's a larger electorate. It's a lot more moderate. It's more independent. I think South Carolina has a reputation for being more religious. But beyond that, what can we say about who these voters are and also maybe what perceptions they have of Nikki Haley in general, given that she was a popular two-term governor?

It's sort of a few things. If you're looking at the New Hampshire primary as a comparison point, it is more Republican, more conservative in terms of where they say they are ideologically, and it's more religious in that roughly two-thirds or so of voters in 2016 to 2012 in the Republican primary said that they were white evangelical Christians. All of those components would seemingly be beneficial for Trump in particular because he tends to do better

with voters who identify as evangelical voters who identify as more conservative which is a change from the 2016 cycle when he actually tended to do a little bit better with somewhat conservative or moderate primary voters whereas ted cruz tended to do best with very conservative voters but trump has won over sort of the cruise wing of the party if you will

And you'd have more people who identify as Republican even though South Carolina is an open primary state. So New Hampshire permits voters who aren't affiliated with either major party to choose if they want to vote in one party's presidential primary. And as it has tended to go in New Hampshire, you end up with a lot of people who identify as independent voting. And we saw that it was like roughly just about half of the electorate identified as Republican in

in New Hampshire a month ago. But in recent South Carolina primaries, it's been more like 70%, 75%. And Trump does best of people who identify as Republican. So even if Haley is winning among people who say they're independent or even throw in Democrats who definitely aren't supporting Trump,

but are not going to make up a particularly large portion of the electorate. There's not the Operation Chaos thing. That just doesn't really happen, even though it gets brought up all the time. It's just not a thing that happens. All of that would say if you got a lot more people who identify as Republican and Trump is crushing among those, it's not hard to see why he's up 30 points in the polls. Yeah.

Yeah, and Nikki Haley, I think it's important to remember, she's popular in South Carolina, more so than I think than in other states we'll see. But like, even if people, even if Republicans aren't voting for her necessarily, that doesn't mean that they don't like her. In the latest Suffolk University poll, she was actually most popular with Democrats, then independents, and then Republicans. But with all of them in South Carolina, her numbers were still right side up.

In a world in which Democrats and independents who, let's keep in mind, didn't vote in the Democratic primary, because if you did vote in the Democratic primary, you cannot vote in the Republican primary. That is the one limitation. So you have to find voters who are so involved in politics that they

chose not to participate in the Democratic primary, which, by the way, participating in the Democratic primary is probably a sign that you are very involved in politics.

And they'd have to be strategic enough to skip that first primary and then have an entire turnout campaign among independents and Democrats, which makes up a much smaller portion of the state than they do in New Hampshire. It's not impossible, but there's no evidence that this is happening. The data suggests it could happen if there were a massive effort. Have we ever seen that?

It's not in recent history that I can remember. I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong. That's why I'm just not seeing this like massive shift potentially happening where like the polling is 30 points wrong.

All right, well, we're going to talk a lot more about what is going on in South Carolina, what ultimately ends up happening there, and what to expect from the Republican primary moving forward on Saturday night. So make sure to tune in. But for now, we're going to move on to our good or bad use of polling segment. And we're going to talk about presidential greatness.

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In honor of President's Day, two political scientists released the results of a survey that tried to measure presidential greatness. The survey collected responses from 154 current and former members of the American Political Science Association, so political scientists and the like.

The survey asked them to rate each president on a scale from 0 to 100 for their overall greatness. The highest ranking president was Abe Lincoln with a score of 94, then FDR with 91, and George Washington with 90.

Further down the list are some contemporary presidents. Joe Biden ranked as the 14th greatest president just ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and Ulysses S. Grant. Donald Trump, meanwhile, was ranked dead last. His score out of 100 was 11.

The white paper that was released with this survey didn't indicate whether respondents had any guidance as to what greatness meant exactly, nor how they should assign points, nor does the paper say how many liberals versus conservatives were included in the sample, though liberals do appear to be overrepresented. The New York Times also published this survey somewhat uncritically, and so it got significant criticism.

play. So we're going to talk about it. Joining us to help out is Dina Smeltz, Senior Fellow on Public Opinion and Foreign Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Welcome to the podcast, Dina. It's so great to be here. Thank you for inviting me. And I should say your expertise in particular is on the issue that we're going to be discussing next, but we figured that we would rope you into this question as well since you are a public opinion expert. So the question that we love

And I'll throw this one to Leah to start, Dino, so you can get a sense of how we do this, and then we want to hear your opinion. Leah, was this a good or bad use of polling? It wasn't a good use of public opinion polling, considering that the people polled are largely responsible for writing history, the first draft of history. I think it's a good exercise. Interesting. Okay. Jeffrey?

To Leah's point, I think it's not really all that helpful from a – like if you're taking this as a public opinion exercise, A, that's actually a huge challenge because there's this concept called recency bias. Right.

You're sort of caught here between trying to gauge people's opinions, expert opinions. But if you were trying to think about this more broadly to the population as a whole, most people are not that engaged to the degree where they would have an opinion about a president much beyond the last handful.

Because that's what they mostly think about. I mean, you see this in public opinion polling where people are asked about who do you think was like the best recent president? And Donald Trump wins every time for Republicans, Barack Obama for Democrats. And it's like, okay, well, obviously those are two recent examples who were extremely popular among their own members of their party, right? So –

So as an exercise in asking people who study political science, or there are also versions of this that ask historians, I think from that perspective, it's interesting. But if you're trying to say like this is some sort of broad statement about like what the public thinks, that that's not the case. All right, Dina, get in here. Good or bad use of polling?

I think it is an interesting study. I mean, I've seen them before. It's interesting to see how some presidents go up and down a little bit. And I commend their effort to do an expert poll because it's really hard to get

a good representative sample. I'm not sure they totally succeeded in doing that. It was a very small subsection of the American political science associations, current and former members. And it wasn't very many, but,

First of all, it's not very representative of all experts. And it's also not representative of what average Americans think. I also think greatness is very vague. So it would have been good to have different criteria and maybe different categories for president on the economy, president on foreign policy, great communicator. I don't know. That would have been a little bit more granular and interesting. Yeah.

I'm a little surprised at how kind you have been to this, we'll call it a survey, because it prompted...

significant backlash. And a couple of things. First of all, this was political scientists, not historians. There are other surveys that specifically ask historians. And there is a C-SPAN survey that asks historians about presidential greatness on 10 different axes, like you suggested, Dina, such as, you know, the economy, political persuasion and whatnot. And

So one of the things that people noticed about this poll was that it did break out conservatives versus liberals and also Republicans versus Democrats in the respondents amongst those experts who responded. And amongst self-identified Republicans, Trump got 31 points out of a total 100 points, which

which means he was well below average for the Republican experts themselves. The National Review also took a look at this survey and did some math in reverse because they didn't actually break out into crosstabs the political associations of the respondents. By doing this math in reverse, they found that the sample looks something like 60% Democrat or liberal,

34% independent or moderate, and about 11% Republican or conservative. So maybe what we're learning here is something about experts overall, as opposed to anything else. What is the goal of this? What are we learning from such a skewed sample bipartisanship? I think the key, and this is what Jeffrey mentioned, is recency bias. And I think the

The New York Times headline, poll rings Biden as 14th best president with Trump last. That's like the last takeaway that you should take from this. That is not my takeaway. Biden is still president. Like you can't, Trump is running for president. That is not the takeaway. What I thought was the most interesting takeaway is that Democrats,

and independents ranks Lincoln as number one and Republicans ranks Washington as number one in terms of like the experts. Not because it's like gonna change the world or even because it represents public opinion. I just think it's an interesting academic way to see how experts view the roots of their party and the roots of American politics and like just kind of in a nerdy history way.

And I will say that I think that once this Netflix show comes out, James Garfield is going to surge from 30. He's just you wait until you find out about James Garfield. He's wow.

It is really hard to do these kinds of surveys. We do them at the Chicago Council, and ours is also not overwhelmingly, but disproportionately Democrat who respond. So the only way you can report the results with integrity, at least that's what we've decided, is to divide them out by partisan ID and then what each partisan group of experts thinks.

But isn't the struggle here that, I mean, and maybe this is in fact what we're learning, that experts, even experts that identify as conservative or Republican, view greatness very differently from their co-partisans in the general public. I mean, ranking Trump

at 30 out of 100 points for Republicans and conservatives seems pretty out of step with the party. Also compare that to they ranked Reagan at over 80 out of 100. And so this seems like, okay, like we know who we're talking to here. We're talking to like...

some like Club for Growth, Chamber of Commerce folks, or maybe economists at the University of Chicago or what have you, who just view the world in a way that is not representative of like very many people in the public anymore. So what are we learning? Like, are we saying these people are influential and so it's worth knowing what they think because are these people even influential? Well, I don't know if it's influential, but they sure as hell know a lot more about like political science and politics than

than the average person. Now, at the same time, of course, the counterpoint to that is that academia, generally speaking, is more liberal than conservative. Now, it does vary from group to group, but political scientists as a whole are certainly not a conservative-leaning bunch. There actually was a poll back in 2009 that I've seen cited

where I think just 6% identified as Republican and 55% identified as Democratic. The rest, about a third, said they were independent. And it's possible that that has become even more skewed as we've seen education polarization ramp up in our politics such that people who have at least a four-year degree and people who have a PhD are even more Democratic-leaning than they used to be.

So in that sense, it's maybe not a shock that Donald Trump scores so poorly. At the same time, this is also the guy who played a role in January 6th, which was sort of an unprecedented moment in American history. So it's not surprising that he ends up ranking pretty poorly on this. I do think the issue though, and to get back to sort of the recency discussion, is that it's I think inappropriate to try to rank –

presidents who have been in office recently. I think that's really hard because there are all sorts of long-term consequences that are sort of impossible to read. Trying to juxtapose

each of these recent presidents' time with people who we've researched and dug into, and we've gotten access to all sorts of things behind the scenes about them. And so we have sort of a better understanding of both public and private and the long-term consequences of the many actions that they took while serving in office. We just have a much better grasp of that than we do about people who served recently. So I think that's really a major shortcoming of any of these kinds of rankings.

What my takeaway is, like, which of the founding fathers stands the test of time? Like, Adams isn't in there, but we still have Washington. Jefferson Lincoln wasn't a founding father, but a larger-than-life president. The least useful tidbits in here are— I just want to really drive this home— are the Trump and Biden and Obama numbers. And that, I mean, a bunch of academics—

who were polled don't think Trump was a good president. You know? I'm not shocked by that. Like, that is not news. What's interesting about this is just, I think, like what Dina was saying, like the structural kind of ways that the two parties in its academic framework, not in terms of public opinion, but how academics think

who study politics, how they view the most important people in the United States. And I think it's interesting that academics who are Republican put Washington first, the founding father, when you think about kind of conservatism as kind of originalist ideas from the 1770s versus Democrats who view Lincoln, obviously, at the great emancipator as their kind of greatest leader.

greatest influence on their party. I mean, that's not how it's phrased. It's not phrased as greatest influence, but I think you can read it that way. So it's just, it's interesting in terms of just like historical analysis. It's not interesting in terms of any sort of news story, unless you're, you know, writing like a

20-page piece for The Atlantic, which I would actually read about this. So... Yeah, I want to put some numbers, actually, to the recency bias issue that we've been talking about. Actually, a 2014 study got at this in a really interesting way, which was that they gave 500 adults five minutes to freely remember as many presidents as they could. And then they chart how likely a president was to be

remembered. And for the most part, it's like an upside down bell curve. So founding fathers and most recent presidents are very likely to be remembered with. So think of an upside down bell curve. I'm trying to describe a graph through audio right now. So bear with me. Upside down bell curve. But then in the middle of that upside down bell curve, there is a spike for Abraham Lincoln. So that is to say that basically it's

the most recent presidents, the first presidents, and then Abraham Lincoln, and folks like Tyler, Polk, Arthur, Cleveland, McKinley, whatever. These folks have almost no one remembered these presidents. They might pop up again for Teddy and FDR. That's true. But by that point, we do start to get into more recent presidents where people can name some of them. But this also...

interestingly segues into another data set that we got from our producer Shane McKeon got really excited by this exercise and he took that C-SPAN survey that we mentioned of historians, specifically historians who looked at presidents on 10 different axes to rate them. So public persuasion, economic management, moral authority, crisis leadership, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, etc.,

and compared historians versus the political scientists that were surveyed in this poll. And there were some actually really significant differences in terms of how historians rated presidents versus political scientists. And it especially pertains to those presidents that most people can't remember. So historians ranked, for example, the biggest gap was

historians ranked McKinley much better than political scientists did. Same with Coolidge. Then from there, Reagan and Polk. When it comes to who political scientists ranked more highly than historians, the biggest gap is Bill Clinton. And

Van Buren. Then another example of historians looking more kindly on his presidency than political scientists was Monroe. So I think what we're getting at here is people who actually study historical presidents in

think about this more critically than when you're just asking a bunch of political scientists, many of whom probably don't know all that much about the 45 different people who served as president or their presidencies. So like to this point, you're saying Leah and Dina about, we are learning something about how experts view presidents. Yes, but we're also learning about how little maybe some of them know about presidents.

Does it make more sense that historians would have a better grasp on the

presidents from a longer time ago than the poli-sci professors, like that they're just like focusing on two different things. I would say not necessarily. Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. History is very rolled up into political science. I mean, it depends on part of what you're studying, of course. Can I end with just saying that I think we should all agree here that James Garfield needs more attention from both the poli-sci people and the historians because...

maybe everyone's missing out. And segue. Okay, so bad use of James Garfield is what Leah has ruled. But in terms of good or bad use of polling, I'm going to go ahead and say bad use of polling. Leah, you come down as? Bad use of polling, good use of something else. I find it interesting. All right, Dina? A B for effort, but maybe not such a success. Okay.

Okay. And Jeff? I would say it is a bad use of polling, interesting use of expert opinion. I'll mostly say it's an especially bad use of polling to just publish the results of this poll, like uncritically without any of the context that we've just discussed. But we have more to talk about today. So let's move on to foreign policy.

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The two global conflicts that have defined foreign policy in the Biden era have taken center stage recently. So Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony last Friday, just over a week before the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

While majority public opinion is pretty squarely on the side of NATO and Ukraine, there is a rift within the Republican Party over how to proceed as regards aid and even in our posture towards Russia.

Now, on the other hand, in Gaza, Israel is continuing to prepare for a ground invasion of Rafah, the southern city in the Gaza Strip that many Palestinians have migrated to during the war that began with the Hamas terrorist attack on October 17th. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 29,000 Palestinians have been killed since then.

Democrats are split over Biden's handling of the conflict, with just 46% approving in a recent AP poll. And now 50% of Americans say Israel has gone too far in its war in Gaza, up from 40% in November. So,

Two parties split over key foreign policy questions and two pretty different approaches. Trump has tended to side against majority public opinion on the issue of Ukraine, even as more establishment voices criticize him for it. And Biden has tended to side with majority public opinion on Israel, even as the left flank of his party defects.

So, Dina, I described a little bit of the public opinion landscape, but you have a much more detailed picture. So can we start with the war in Ukraine and Russia's aggression? We're coming up on the second anniversary. What do Americans think about that sort of broadly and then within the two parties specifically? Americans are concerned about Ukraine.

But there are big party differences, like you mentioned. At the start of the war, large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats supported giving military and economic assistance to Ukraine. The overall number was almost 8 in 10.

Over time, the Republicans in particular have steadily declined in their support for both military and economic assistance. So, for example, in March of 2022, 74 percent of Republicans supported providing economic assistance to Ukraine. In our last survey in September, that fell to 47 percent. And we have some new data that we haven't yet published, so I can't

give you the number, but it's fallen a little bit more. Well, you can just break news right here on the podcast right now. Chalk pole. Fortunately, we have an exclusive, so I can't. Next time I'll have to get Jeffrey to cover it. So that has fallen from 74 in March to 47 in September 2023.

Among Democrats, it's fallen just a little bit, 85 to 76. It's still pretty high. And independence has dropped from 75 to 58. So that's on economic assistance. Military assistance is pretty much similar. Democrats are still incredibly supportive of giving Ukraine military assistance, additional arms and military supplies to the Ukrainian government.

83% of Democrats supported it in March 2022. Now it's 77%. For Republicans, it went from 80% in March to 50% in September. And it's fallen a little bit more since then. You know, it's interesting. So that's the white.

Have you gotten any more into the why behind the significant drop-off for Republicans now to the point where it seems to divide the party in two? Yeah. So in our poll in September, we asked about a series of issues that American leaders are working on, and they thought that the U.S. leadership is paying too much attention to the war in Ukraine and not enough attention

on issues like China and immigration. So immigration in China for foreign policy, those are like the top issues for Republicans. It's also reflective of what the Republican leadership, especially in the House, has been saying. And also Donald Trump has been saying since the bill didn't even get to the floor in the House because of Trump's opposition to it.

Yeah. And looking at that poll, we also saw that there was a split amongst Republicans who aligned themselves as sort of Trump Republicans versus non-Trump Republicans. And you see that non-Trump Republicans are far more likely to support American intervention abroad than—

Right. Trump Republicans are those Republicans who have a very favorable view of Donald Trump and non-Trump Republicans are those who have a somewhat favorable or unfavorable. So, yeah, really big differences because the people who do not have a very favorable view of Donald Trump, those Republicans still a majority support giving aid to Ukraine.

It's interesting. You all have been doing this survey for quite some time. And this recent survey was the first time in your 50-some years of doing this that a majority of Republicans said it would be best for the future of the United States to stay out of rather than to take an active part in world affairs. Right.

Yeah. When the data come in, we don't normally see big drops on that particular question. That's a really time-tested barometer of U.S. engagement in the world. And for the first time, 52% of Republicans said we should stay out of world affairs versus 47%.

who said we should play an active part in world affairs. Generally, over the course of the past 50 years, when we first started asking this question, Republicans were higher than Democrats in wanting to take an active role in world affairs. But since 2016, they've been dropping off a bit. And it's not just Republicans who've fallen on this, but

the biggest drops are among them. And overall, 57% of Americans say we should still take an active part in world affairs, but that's among the lowest we've seen over the past five decades. I want to finish painting the public opinion landscape, and then I want to get Jeffrey and Leah in to talk a little bit more about the politics here. But when we switch to the war in Gaza and the Israel-Palestine conflict, what do we see in terms of public opinion?

In September, at that point, and recent polling also shows it's not that different, that a majority of Americans say the United States should not take either side in the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. At that point, 32% said Israel and 10% said Israel.

Palestinian. The most recent numbers show that the majority still say we should take neither side, but the Palestinian side has increased a little bit and the Israeli side has decreased just a little bit. You know, it's the mirror image of what we see for Ukraine, except it is the Democrats that are divided, not the Republicans. The Republicans are really unified in their support for Israel. Democrats are divided

divided on it. And we looked at sort of liberal Democrats versus moderate Democrats. And liberal Democrats are more likely to say they should take the Palestinian side than the Israeli side. But again, for the most part, most people say we shouldn't take either side in the conflict. And then 62% of Democrats say

say that the United States should restrict its aid, military aid to Israel so that this aid cannot be used in military operations against the Palestinians. And this has been true for a while since 2021 and 2022. It's still about the same level. But the biggest differences

And I think the biggest threat for Biden is among younger Americans. So this is overall not just Democrats, but among all age groups. It's much higher support to restrict aid. Also, more support for the Palestinians over the Israelis among younger voters who tend to be

more liberal who tend to be democratic. And so if they were to stay home or to vote uncommitted, as some are asking them to do in Michigan, that would be a really big problem for Biden. The other group in our data that would like to see the United States do more for the Palestinians versus Israelis is African-Americans. You know, a lot of polls have shown African-Americans and Hispanics as

being on sort of the other side of Biden's position on Israel. We didn't really see that with Hispanics too much, but we did see it a little bit with African-Americans. All right. So let's talk about the politics here. And I think we want to talk about some vulnerability on both sides. But since we were just talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, let's stay there.

How vulnerable, Jeffrey, is Biden on his left flank when it comes to that question? I think it's important to say that the vulnerability here is a question of the general election and not one in the primary. I know there's some talk about Democratic primary voters taking advantage of the uncommitted option that is on the Michigan primary ballot, but I think it is important to remember that

He faces minimal opposition in terms of the candidates. And so Biden is going to very easily win the Michigan primary. And I think to some extent, a lot of this is getting overstated. Not to say that Michigan doesn't have a large Arab-American population. And it is a group that has traditionally leaned Democratic-

We should clarify here that large by American standards is 2% of the Michigan population is Arab, which is a little over 200,000 voters. Yeah. So it's large by American standards. As a share of the state's population, it's the largest in the country in Michigan. But yes, it is not a large group. Of course, Biden also won Michigan by a very narrow margin in 2020. Yeah.

If he were to see a big drop in turnout among that group, because I'm not sure they're going to swing to Trump necessarily. But if you were to see a notable drop off in turnout, and that also goes for maybe younger voters who are particularly displeased with Gaza, if that's an issue that they feel strongly about, that they're frustrated with because Biden performs worse among young voters.

young voters on the issue of Israel and Gaza. So if you're sort of seeing reduced turnout and less enthusiasm there,

Yeah. I mean, that could absolutely hurt him. I think at the same time, though, it's also important to remember that, as Galen pointed out, Biden has hewed maybe more closely to overall public opinion in the United States. And if he were to take a particularly pro-Palestinian and what could be perceived as very anti-Israel position, that actually might hurt him even more politically. So, you know, in that sense, you have a really difficult issue for his coalition because it's so divided. And it's

Politically, you want your side to have ownership of issues where there's a fair amount of or something close to unanimity and the other side is divided. So this is where it's been tough, whereas Ukraine has been the issue where Republicans are divided. I'm going to make a slightly blanket statement here. When you have a Democratic versus Republican race, whether the Democratic coalition wins or

Usually comes down to three factors, enthusiastic turnout from young voters and people of color, kind of this coalition that Ron Brownstein has called the coalition of the ascendant. You know what we think about when we have demographics being destiny, you know, the future of the Democratic Party.

Party. That's one group. The other group is kind of suburban Republicans. And I would actually put into that group some of the older white Republicans that have been loyal to Biden. And then third, you have kind of the rural white Republicans who have, you know, gone to the Republican Party. Basically, Democrats need that suburban coalition and that coalition of the ascendant to outnumber

So what this does with Russia, Ukraine, and Israel is it puts a magnifying glass on a dynamic that already exists.

So it's always been kind of a balancing act, getting some of the kind of maybe like former, like traditional Republicans who have gone toward Biden, gone toward Democrats since the Trump era, appeasing them without depressing turnout among this coalition of the ascendant. Those are the two things that Biden is balancing with his handling of Israel versus his handling of Ukraine. And I will say that the coalition that has

gotten Biden to the White House is that he overperforms other Democrats when it comes to older, middle-aged white voters. And so his handling of Ukraine might be, the fact that it's appeasing that coalition might be more important politically than the fact that his handling of Israel is depressing turnout in the coalition of the ascendant. But like,

Either way, it's a really hard balance. And I think most Democratic politicians have to weigh those two factors.

Jeffrey, shortly after the October 7th attack, you suggested that some members of the squad, you wrote a piece about this, could be vulnerable to primary challenges from the right, essentially from more moderate or establishment parts of the party because of how they had reacted to the attack. Do you think that's still the case? Or do you think that politics within the Democratic Party have sort of flipped at this point to where people

progressives are and can be a little more on the offensive and that the establishment is feeling a little more like they have to criticize Israel increasingly. I think it's a potential weakness for some of the squad members still. For instance, Jamal Bowman has potential problems in his district, which is mostly based in Westchester County, just north of New York City.

But at the same time, Rashida Tlaib has no – I don't believe still an actual primary challenger and certainly no one notable, if anyone, has filed. And she obviously is a very high-profile member and especially as a Palestinian-American on the issue of Israel and Gaza.

So she doesn't have a challenger. At the same time, someone like Cori Bush has a challenger, but she also has – there's some questions, I think some ethics questions now surrounding her. So it really – it's really a district-to-district thing so far, and it may actually matter to some extent what the demographics of the district are. But even then, I think it's kind of difficult. Like it may be a little idiosyncratic approach.

in terms of just district to district, just how vulnerable each member is and just how much this issue is playing into that vulnerability. Yeah, and I think even if we look at Biden, it...

It seems like he is reacting to shifting politics in that he has, for example, the executive order levying sanctions on settlers in the West Bank, for example. And increasingly, this idea that he's pushing for a ceasefire, which at the beginning of the conflict was not on the table at all.

I do, before we wrap up here, want to talk a little bit about the Republican side of the equation more, which is the divide within the Republican Party over Democrats.

Ukraine. Trump has not towed the American party line on folks like Putin or Kim Jong-un, what have you, for years now. And so there may be some instinct that his position on Russia or Ukraine doesn't really matter, but it is out of step with majority public opinion in a significant way. I'm curious how we see this shaping politics. Jeff, if you have thoughts.

I think it's a little complicated in that we know that Republican sentiment on Ukraine has turned sort of more and more sour toward American involvement, American aid,

And there's no doubt that it's in part because someone like Trump, who's continued to sort of be the leader of the Republican Party even before he was in this position where he is nearly the presumptive nominee, was pushing a line. And I think that line is one that a lot of voters end up following because – look.

There's a two-way street here where, yes, the sort of base of the party can influence the decision-making about how to approach issues when it comes to like the politicians themselves. But particularly on an issue where people are not as engaged or not as well-informed, what public officials say can influence what the base of the party thinks. So the idea that Trump has taken this very – pretty hard line in terms of NATO and how the US should be dealing with Russia in terms of

Not sort of the more traditional, I would say, NATO-friendly anti-Russian position, but

It has undoubtedly influenced Republicans to some extent, and I would wager that there's a decent chance that it will continue to and that you might even see Republican opinion turn even more lukewarm toward NATO and more towards Trump's position generally on how to handle these things. And I think a lot of that's just down to the influence of the number one political elite, if you will, in Donald Trump.

All right, we're going to leave things there for today. Thank you so much, Dina, Leah, and Jeff. Thanks. Hey, thanks, Galen. Thank you. My name is Galen Drew. Tony Chow is in the control room. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chertavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.