Shibley Telhami is Anwar Sadat professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His newest book is The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East.

Years of tension between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama may have paid off in one respect: Among Republicans, Netanyahu’s name is invoked as a most admired “national or world leader” as often as Ronald Reagan’s.

Certainly, the results may partly underline how hard Republican presidential candidates need to work to win over their overwhelmingly pro-Israel base. GOP front-runner Donald Trump got a lesson in that on Thursday, when he received a lukewarm reception at the Republican Jewish Coalition candidate forum after refusing to say that Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel. But GOP candidates are principally catering to an evangelical base that has become Israel’s biggest support base in American politics: 65 percent of evangelicals want the United States to lean toward Israel compared with 26 percent for the rest of the population.


The survey results come at the end of a year during which Netanyahu was accused by many of heavy-handed intervention in American politics. As he weighed into the congressional debate on the Iranian nuclear program, the Israeli leader managed to become an American household name. Even nationally, among all Americans, he places third, coming after Obama and Ronald Reagan, slightly ahead of Pope Francis.

But before the Israeli prime minister’s office breaks open the champagne, it should pay attention to other poll results suggesting that this popularity among Republicans and evangelicals has come at a heavy price for the prime minister and Israel.

The University of Maryland poll of a nationally representative sample of 875 Americans, and an oversample of 863 evangelicals/born again Christians was conducted in cooperation with the Program for Public Consultation and fielded by Nielsen Scarborough, Nov. 4-10. (It will be released at an event of the Brookings Institution on Dec. 4).

Here is a start: While a plurality of Americans say Israel has just the “right level of influence” in American politics, twice as many Americans say it has too much influence as say it has too little. Among Democrats, half say Israel has too much influence, outnumbering those who say it has too little by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1. Even among Republicans and independents, more people say Israel has too much influence than say it has too little.

Attitudes toward Netanyahu must also be put in perspective. One should not underestimate his popularity among Republicans and evangelicals, but part of this popularity is simply name recognition. Most Americans are hard pressed to remember names of allied leaders such as David Cameron and François Hollande. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is portrayed in the news as more of a villain to Americans than a hero, places 5th on the national list, but with only 3 percent.

More problematic for Netanyahu is that the number of individuals who hold unfavorable views of him in the United States has expanded in the past year, and the partisan divide has also grown. Among all Americans, those who have unfavorable views of Israel’s prime minister have increased from 15 percent in 2014 to 23 percent in the new poll, while those who have favorable views have decreased from 33 percent to 31 percent. Republicans and independents have not changed their views much (slightly worse for Bibi, but roughly within the margin of error). The big change is among Democrats: Those with unfavorable views of Netanyahu have increased from 22 percent in 2014 to 34 percent, and those holding favorable views have decreased from 25 percent to 18 percent.

The bottom line is that not only is there a significantly expanded partisan gap in the American public view of Netanyahu, but there is also no net gain for him even among Republicans and independents, with overall increase in the unfavorable views of him nationally.

Have Netanyahu’s efforts made a difference on American public attitudes toward policy issues? Of course, the Israeli prime minister’s critical issue of the past year has been to highlight the danger of the Iranian nuclear deal, which neither he nor intensive GOP congressional efforts were able to stop. Has Netanyahu’s campaign made Americans more fearful of Iran and more focused on its threat?

The poll suggests no significant change in American public attitudes on Middle East policy priorities. It was taken before the ISIL Paris attacks but after a reported ISIL bomb brought down a Russian civilian aircraft over Egypt. Asked how they ranked threats facing the U.S. in the Middle East, most Americans continued to rank the ISIL threat far above that of Iran with the results being well within the margin of error of the 2014 poll results. Overall, 69 percent (70 percent in 2014) identified the rise of ISIL as the biggest threat, while 14 percent identified Iranian behavior (compared with 12 percent in 2014).

Which is to say that from a policy perspective, Netanyahu’s striking popularity is not all that it is made out to be, since its costs may be higher than its benefits.