The percentage of Americans viewing Israel favorably has fallen to 59 percent.
By contrast, nearly a quarter of Americans (24 percent) now view the Palestinian
Authority favorably. Americans viewing Iran favorably also surged to a recent
high of 16% of the adult population.
These are the results of three IRmep polls of the U.S. adult internet population
fielded by Google Consumer Surveys February 19-20. The questions posed were,
“What is your overall opinion of [country]?” Respondents could also
fill in their own response. Most of these, representing up to 12.9% of the total
responses, offered no opinion.
The IRmep survey methodology differs from the popular Gallup World Affairs
Survey methodology. Gallup conducts a serial telephone survey with multiple
questions per respondent. Gallup’s last publicly available data is from a February
8-11, 2015 survey of 837 adults with a 4% margin of error. IRmep’s Google
Consumer Survey margin of error on three questions fielded separately ranged
from only 1.5% to 2.3% with a sample size target of 1029 national adults. Nevertheless,
comparing historical Gallup data (2001-2015) with new IRmep poll numbers (2016
only) asking the same question reveals a stunning turn in U.S. public opinion.