Will the war in Gaza still matter come Election Day?
I posed this question to voting rights experts Christina Baal-Owens and Ella Wind, who also explained if the role of misinformation has warped people’s perceptions of the conflict and much more.
Friday was the eight-month anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war—a conflict that has ignited nationwide protests demanding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel step down and President Joe Biden to both broker a ceasefire in Gaza and withhold US support from the Israeli government in hopes the pressure will force Netanyahu to shift his military strategy.
The war has also triggered an uptick in antisemitism at home and left Palestinians in the region in harm’s way abroad. On Capitol Hill, House Republicans have weaponized the war into a series of messaging bills meant to divide the Democratic Party. Then there are the electoral politics to consider: Biden’s execution of decades of US-Israel policy has him at odds with key cohorts of the coalition he’ll need to win a second term this November and beat back-to-back attempts by former President Donald Trump to reclaim the Oval Office.
In Friday’s newsletter, I published insights from a poll conducted by Public Wise, which the voting rights and democracy group exclusively shared Once Upon a Hill ahead of its release. The poll found that 11 percent of voters who supported Biden in 2020 said they are either currently uncommitted to voting again for the president but still planning to vote or are considering voting but undecided about for whom.
The Friday edition is definitely worth the read. But I wanted to publish the full conversation with Public Wise Executive Director Christina Baal-Owens and Research Associate Ella Wind who went deep on the poll’s findings and explained why they think the war in Gaza has resonated with young people and people of color so much, if the war will still be a salient issue by November and if the role of misinformation has warped people’s perceptions of the conflict.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Was there a piece of data from the poll that stood out to or surprised you?
Christina Baal-Owens: I think what really stuck out for a group like Public Wise is the message testing was really strong for us.
And I think something that is helpful throughout the whole cycle where it was really interesting to see that voters—whether or not they identified themselves as single-issue voters—showed a lot of empathy for single-issue voters.
I think we’ve heard a lot of debates where people try to say it is not a good idea or is counterproductive to vote on a single issue, where that messaging actually tested really poorly—anything that sort of shamed single-issue voters was not something that tested well and that a more holistic message tested well.
And then also, again, wanting to have really practical implications of this, looking at what we call the “persuadable defectors”—who are those folks that are more open to having any sort of persuasion done where it’s more possible to bring them back to vote for Biden in this case, having those really specific numbers. Because when I hear pundits talk about it, it's a lot more anecdotal than based in data. Having that hard data has I think is really helpful for campaigns and organizers.
How would you describe a “persuadable detector” within the context of this poll?
Ella Wind: How we defined persuadable defectors was basically based on their response to some of the questions in our survey.
So we classified people who voted for Biden in 2020 into three categories: First, Biden committeds, who were 80 percent of Biden 2020 voters. So those are people who said that they are planning to vote and that it will be for Biden.
And then we had 20 percent that are defectors and 11 percent of these are persuadable defectors. So they said that either they maybe will vote, but they didn’t specify the candidate. Or they said that they definitely plan to vote, but they weren’t sure who they were going to vote for yet. So persuadable defectors are basically people that gave a response that wasn't, ‘I'm not going to vote. I'm know I'm gonna vote for this other candidate.’ So is anyone who gave that kind of a response.
But among the persuadable defectors, we found some that there were some standout characteristics—some differences between them and the general population of Biden 2020 voters. So when we analyzed the data, we saw that they tend to be younger, they tend to be less white, a lot more Latino, lower income, so actually most of them fall below the household median income in the US.
And we also found that MENA—Middle Eastern and North African—Americans and Muslim Americans fell into this group disproportionately high rates. So they’re not a huge percentage of the Biden persuadable defectors because they’re a smaller proportion of the population overall. But in terms of their prevalence in the overall population, they were very represented in that group.
Why do you think this particular issue has resonated with voters of color?
EW: In terms of the research, especially our qualitative research, we saw there are a lot there are a lot of people for whom there is some kind of personal tie. People are part of identity groups, for example, that would give them a special kind of interest in particular, the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
But I also think in terms of what I can say beyond the research is that there always has been—or not always but for many, many decades now—a close focus in US foreign policy on Israel, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel has the receipt of the greatest amount of military aid from the US annually. And I think that that gives Americans in general a particular interest in it. And we've seen that even before October 7, there's been huge generational shifts, especially among Democrats, in terms of views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with increasing cohorts being more and more hesitant about that level of military aid being sent.
So I think it’s not really surprising that the kind of reaction we’ve seen, especially with the campus protests and things like that, if you look at the overall trend and trajectory of the US-Israel relationship and US public opinion about that relationship.
CBO: I wanted to jump in also in say the organizing around this issue this cycle has been more powerful than I think in others.
So we partner with many different groups and what your stance is on this issue is not one of the things that we asked when we are partnering with groups. But we are working with some of the groups that are very involved in the on the noncommitted or uncommitted campaign. And that campaign has gotten incredible reach through social media through channels that reach a lot of younger voters. And there's just been a lot more education beyond what's in the media being pushed out to this group of voters.
How salient will this issue be compared to others that will likely be top of mind for voters in November, including abortion, the cost of living and protecting American democracy?
EW: The way that I would characterize what we found from our research is I would agree with you that the war in and of itself is probably not going to be the single-defining issue for many people’s votes. But it really does seem like it’s one of the issues that voters are thinking about in terms of what kind of holistic bundle of issues.
So we saw this in our research again and again, in our surveys and in our qualitative research that people are voting holistically. They’re looking at several different issues. And the war in Gaza is one of those issues. And we see that the Biden defectors—that the people who voted for Biden in 2020 and who aren't committed yet to voting for him in 2024—have much higher rates of disapproval of his handling of the war and many of them are saying that they think that he is favoring the Israelis too much—that is like one of the big reasons for disapproval.
So one of the ways we talked about it is that it’s probably not the defining factor, but it is part of this bundle. And for some people, it really could be kind of like a tipping-point factor and I think that that was a view that we saw in a lot of when we talk to people qualitatively and do these one-on-one interviews that we heard is people who already were upset about things like inflation, the end of Roe v. Wade, et cetera, the war in Gaza might be this, this additional reason that they were dissatisfied and considering sitting out in November.
What role do you think misinformation has had on how voters from diverse communities view the politics of the war on Gaza?
EW: In our survey, something that we did that was a little different than a lot of the other polls on public opinion around the war on Gaza was allowing people to say ‘l don't know.’
So a lot of other polls, for example, they ask, ‘Do you think the US should call a ceasefire?’ and it’s yes or no and you can see that in the poll results that the numbers just add up the yeses in the nos out up to 100 percent.
We wanted to always offer people the option to say I don’t know or I’m not sure. And we found that among the Biden defectors, there were higher rates of people saying they didn’t know what they thought the US should do or what the US’s role should be in Gaza and also they didn’t know or weren’t sure about what they thought of Biden’s handling. And we actually did additional analysis to investigate the possibility that maybe they are lower-information voters since that would be one reason you might have seen that slightly higher response rate.
We did find that Biden defectors do tend to say that they follow the news a little less frequently but they didn't feel quite as confident evaluating foreign policy specifically in the Israel-Palestine conflict in general.
But I also wouldn’t say that the numbers were dramatically different to the point where I would say, ‘Oh, all these people that are not going to vote for Biden, again, are low-information voters.’ I think there are some differences and like we said these populations tend to be younger, for example, lower income, maybe they have a lot of things going on that make it harder for them to devote the time to always following the news diligently but also, most of them do follow the news to some degree.
CBO: I would say that I think also based on the answer that people don’t know what their answer is, that makes me think more than it’s less about misinformation or a misinformation campaign because then there would probably be a conspiracy theory or like a direct answer of what you want.
And it’s more that people just have a gut feeling, which emotions play a lot into who we vote for, they have a feeling that something is wrong. They don’t have the solution, but they don't like what's happening. So I think there's a difference between that and a group of voters that's been targeted by direct misinformation.
EW: That's a great point, Christina. And just to add to what you're saying, we actually found that they were basically equal rates of reporting how much they had been hearing about the war.
So while the Biden defectors had a lower confidence in their own ability to give an opinion, they had heard the same amounts. And so I think that that goes with Christina’s point that it’s not that they’re like confidently picking up conspiracy theories or something like that from TikTok, they’re actually maybe more skeptical or a little bit more hesitant to take a strong opinion on this.
What do you hope readers will take away from the research?
CBO: One question I've been asked as someone who works in this field—and Michael, you may experience this too—people, I think, come to you for hope in a hopeless time and figuring out how to fix all the problems with the electoral system.
But one of the things that people keep asking us is what do we say to people who are afraid to vote or not willing to vote Biden because of this? And we really wanted to come up with a data-driven answer to that. So I think that’s helpful for the average voter that wants to talk to their family, it’s helpful—I mean, we're pushing this out hard with organizing partners who are in the field talking to young voters, talking to voters of color and having some sort of tested message to be able to say that this worked with the most people that we tested, right? This is what we thought to be a best practice so you can talk about family issues holistically and the effect of who the candidate is on all of the issues in your life, right? That was something that was really tested. What you should not do is this.
So we really just wanted to come up with very practical answers that could be used now and until November to talk to voters who are either on the fence or just really dug in about not voting Biden or not voting against Trump because of this issue.”
EW: I would agree with that. And I would say that really what came away for me about the messaging that wasn’t anything we necessarily thought we would find was how much even the people that do not identify single issue voters that say, ‘I'm the kind of person person who votes holistically, I could never vote on a single issue. I would always vote looking at the candidate as a whole and how it'll affect my life as a whole.’ Even those people really did not like explicitly putting down the concept of single-issue voting.
So I know there’s a lot of people who work in politics, work in persuasion, work in messaging, who might have had been talking a lot about single-issue voting, especially around Gaza. And I think a lot of the messaging has been shame-focused or saying those people are doing something bad or wrong. And we found not only that the people that are planning on maybe voting single issue on Gaza, or on other topics, found that messaging to be very ineffective. But even the people that don’t plan to vote that way didn’t like that kind of messaging and they really bristled at that in terms of talking about Gaza because people from across different positions on the war in Gaza recognize that is something that is very emotionally salient for people.
And for some voters, they will have good reason for that to be their single issue and so trying to wipe that away for people and just say no, no, no, just ignore that and move on, that’s really not the way to go about engaging either those voters or the general voting population.
Any last words?
CBO: From this data, just the thing that I really want to get out there into the world and into the folks especially that are organizing young voters, voters of color, voters that may feel disenchanted with the system is we really hope that this is a helpful way to learn to talk to voters. One, to identify which voters in your universe could be persuadable or more likely to be persuadable and how to talk to you about that. So we really hope that this is super concrete things that you can integrate into your field plans.
And then also just generally with Public Wise, we are putting we put out tools that we hope are useful in these ways. And some of the things have been identifying election deniers in government that are either electable or appointed. Our goal has always been and our work is putting out tools that are research-based and data-driven, that can be directly implemented. into building out the electorate and keeping people involved.