[erimir]

Specifically, what the new data shows is that Democrats more than Republicans are sacrificing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to partisan politics.

Now, it seems to me that Democrats have been relatively stable from 1978 through 2016 or thereabouts, while support for Israel was becoming significantly more partisan due to Republicans shifting strongly in favor over that period. And even after the shift of the past couple years, Republicans are more unified on the issue than Democrats. But obviously the conclusion is that it's the Democrats who are partisan on this issue

In other words, while there is a partisan divide, it is driven more by an explosion in Republican support than in a cratering in Democratic support.

They even note this themselves. Kinda weird to include such contradictory statements.

I also don't know why they attribute Israel's popularity with Republicans to Bibi's popularity, rather than the other way around. It does not strike me that he has much personal popularity in the US. They support him because they support Israel, not because he's a charisma machine or something...

This is not to suggest that partisanship surrounding Israel is new. Israel became a deeply partisan issue under the Obama administration for too many reasons to recount in this space, from President Obama’s relationship with Netanyahu to friction over settlements to the Iran deal and Netanyahu’s address to Congress.

Strange again that they say this, despite the graph showing relative stability in Democratic opinion over the Obama years.

I think some of the shift will be durable but I wouldn't expect all of it to stick. Democrats' general ideological orientation doesn't really make sense to be as pro-Israel as it has been, and Trump causing a reevaluation of US support for Israel will cause some to realize they were on the wrong side all along. (And also conditions in Israel haven't been static either - you can conclude that Israel used to be more worthy of support, which would reduce cognitive dissonance.) Sudden shifts can happen like this and be relatively sticky. For example, both California and Vermont voted for George Bush in 1988, yet have never voted for a Democrat by less than a 10 pt margin ever since.

I don't see much reason to make a comparison to war under Bush. Democrats never adopted an anti-war stance en masse. Democrats opposing the Iraq War wasn't about becoming pacifists. And I expect most Democrats still think the initial decision to invade Iraq was a mistake.