Religious Beliefs, Elite Polarization, and Public Opinion on Foreign Policy: The Partisan Gap in American Public Opinion Toward Israel

Examining American attitudes toward Israel, this article demonstrates that religious beliefs and elite polarization both play a significant role in predicting public opinion about foreign policy. It is argued that the growing gap in partisan support for Israel is explained by two related transformations in the American political parties: the emergence of new religious cleavages and the polarization of the political parties. Using a time series of public attitudes toward Israel since 1967, it is revealed that the partisan support is strongly explained by religious preferences, that these religious preferences have aligned with partisan identification in the 1990s, and that the polarization between Democratic and Republican elites in recent years has further distanced the attitudes of Republican and Democratic identifiers.