AP-NORC poll finds many Jewish Americans feel less safe after Oct. 7

Only 34% of Jewish adults say they feel very or somewhat safe in the United States as Jewish people, while 36% say they feel somewhat or very unsafe. The AP-NORC poll, conducted June 11-17 with 3,040 adults on the AmeriSpeak panel and a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points, found that 62% of Jewish adults feel less safe now than before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and 77% say prejudice against Jewish people has increased since then.

That sense of insecurity has altered everyday behavior. About 40% of Jewish adults said they are less likely to wear, carry or display items that might identify them as Jewish, a sign that fear is shaping how people move through public life and present themselves. The poll also found direct experiences of hostility: about 1 in 10 Jewish adults said they or someone in their household experienced physical assault or property damage because of their Jewish background in the past year, while about 2 in 10 said they were verbally harassed or harassed online.

Political support offers little comfort. Only 15% of Jewish adults said the Democratic Party supports them well, and 16% said the same of the Republican Party. The survey also captured how sharply Israel and Gaza remain bound up with Jewish safety concerns: 79% of Jewish adults called the Oct. 7 attack unjustified, 69% said Hamas is not justified in refusing to disarm after the October 2025 ceasefire, and 38% said the United States is too supportive of Israel, compared with 32% who said it is not supportive enough and 28% who said support is about right.

Those fears land against a broader record of antisemitic incidents that has kept pressure on schools, campuses and public institutions. The Anti-Defamation League recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2024, its highest annual total on record, including 1,694 on college campuses, up 84% from 2023. The group said 58% of those incidents were linked to Israel or Zionism. Federal hate-crime statistics released Aug. 5, 2025, showed 1,938 reported single-bias anti-Jewish hate-crime incidents in 2024, also a record for the bureau.

The White House and U.S. Department of Justice’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, launched in 2023, names improving safety and security for Jewish communities as one of its core pillars. The AP-NORC poll suggests that for many Jewish Americans, the danger remains personal, visible and built into daily decisions about where to go, what to wear and how openly to show who they are.