For six weeks our national polarization tracking survey included an item measuring public support for an explicitly antisemitic murder—an act motivated by a victim’s Jewish identity. Our data include 6,000 interviews from YouGov (May-July 2025).
Direct support for antisemitic murder is low but meaningful at 2.8%–a level comparable to what we measure for political violence. However, the key finding is the alarmingly high level of public indifference. Our study shows that 8.3% of Americans are indifferent to an explicitly antisemitic murder. This figure is four times larger than the indifference we observe toward other types of political murder. Together, 11.1% of Americans either support or are indifferent to the murder of a Jew simply because the victim was Jewish.
There was little variation in these results over two months, indicating that Americans’ views on antisemitic murder are consistent and not the result of a one-off event or our sample.
Discussion
In the past several months, America has seen high-profile attacks on elected officials and Jewish Americans. The FBI recently reported a record number of anti-Jewish hate crimes, and the second highest total of all hate crimes since records began. These acts of violence are all deeply concerning. Unlike political violence, which is extremely uncommon, antisemitic hate crimes are both more common and more tolerated by the public. PRL’s continuous tracking poll, running since 2022, indicates that Americans do largely condemn acts of partisan violence. While public opinion can always shift in response to events and elite persuasion, our data on political violence over time suggests that public support for widespread partisan conflict is low.
In contrast, the results presented in this report on support and indifference for antisemitic violence reveal that polling simply on support for political violence may mask deeply concerning patterns of indifference for hate-based violence. Our results are similar to those found in recent work by the Anti-Defamation League, where polling found that 87% of Americans disagree with recent acts of antisemitic violence and 85% disagree that violent acts were necessary. These data highlight the importance of asking unambiguous survey questions about political violence so that we can collect the most accurate data on what is driving hate in America and allocate resources with precision.
Survey Design
The survey item was designed according to best practices for measuring political violence, ensuring high-quality data by confirming that:
- The crime’s motivation was unambiguous.
- The perpetrator had been adjudicated guilty, removing any doubt about the facts of the case.
Data were collected from high-quality samples using attention checks to ensure data integrity.
Survey question: “Alan Whitle was convicted of murder. He was arrested by police after surveillance footage was found showing him stabbing a prominent member of the local Jewish community to death. Whitle targeted the victim because the victim was Jewish, driven by opposition to the war in Gaza. Do you support or oppose Whitle’s actions?”