The Right Has a Problem, The Left Is On Fire: What 2026 Primaries Tell Us About Antisemitism in Both Parties

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Recent polling would seem to indicate that the U.S.-Israel relationship is in trouble, and that antisemitism is on the rise across the political spectrum. However, as any good political analyst will tell you, the poll that matters most happens on Election Day. It’s one thing to tell a pollster you think Israel has too much influence on American politics; it’s quite another to vote in accordance with that belief. As a result, the 2026 primaries are the most important barometer for the current state of anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment on both sides of the political spectrum.

If you believe many of the media narratives, antisemitism is a bipartisan problem evenly distributed between the two parties. This is not what the data shows. The right does have an antisemitism problem, but as of 2026, it is confined to a small slice of the primary electorate, not sufficient to win a primary. On the other hand, a substantial segment of the left has been fully caught up in anti-Israel fervor that veers into antisemitism quickly and easily. While this faction of the party doesn’t win every primary race, it is durable, substantial, and will likely play an outsized role in determining the next Democratic nominee for President.

Our evidence from Democratic primaries is now robust. Since the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have made opposition to Israel their cause célèbre, hardcore anti-Israel candidates with extreme left-wing ideology have won deep blue urban congressional races in several states. This string of primary victories was capped off by a narrow win for far-left, DSA-oriented candidate Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary. There were a few anomalies in the pattern. In Maryland’s Fifth Congressional District, a majority African American district anchored by the city of Bowie but stretching into southern Maryland, a pro-Israel Democrat won the race to succeed Steny Hoyer. In Wisconsin, late consolidation of the Democratic establishment helped African American Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly defeat far-left socialist and Thanksgiving skeptic Francesca Hong. However, the DSA trend continued in Florida, where left-wing, anti-Israel state representative Angie Nixon upset Trump-resistance hero and recent Florida transplant Alexander Vindman in a primary to take on Senator Ashley Moody.

What can we take away from this mixed, but mostly successful, record of DSA wins? First, demographic analysis shows that the lurch to the anti-Israel left is not, contrary to the mythology of the democratic socialists, a phenomenon driven by poor voters. White college-educated Democrats are the epicenter of this trend, with Black voters either opposing DSA candidates or, in rare cases, tactically supporting them.

Here, three primaries are instructive: Michigan Senate, Wisconsin governor, and Florida Senate. In the Michigan Senate race, El-Sayed was polling far ahead of his rival, Rep. Haley Stevens, but he won the primary very narrowly. The reason is a combination of African Americans, who broke for Stevens by a substantial margin, and Democrats from small towns and rural counties, who also went heavily for her. El-Sayed’s strongest areas were heavily Muslim communities, but also those with high concentrations of white college-educated Democrats. A similar dynamic showed up in the Wisconsin governor’s race, where Hong dramatically underperformed her polling. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee County tells the story: Hong, despite running a campaign in which she emphasized her discomfort with her own “proximity to whiteness,” did very well in white parts of the county, and fared poorly against her African American opponent in non-white parts of the county. Florida tells a different story. Nixon, who is herself African American and a Florida native, won African American voters convincingly over Vindman (a white establishment figure with weak Florida ties) and consequently notched a very convincing win in the primary.

House primaries tell a similar story. Pro-Israel Adrian Boafo won convincingly in Maryland’s Fifth District, an African American-heavy district in which his support for Israel was less of a deterrent than key local endorsements, not least from Hoyer, were a plus. In New York, by contrast, DSA candidates like Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier relied heavily on college-educated white voters for their margins of victory. Working-class minority and/or African American voters in these districts are not voting for DSA candidates in the same numbers. The one immigrant group that bucks this trend is Muslim voters, who are aligning with anti-Israel voters.

There’s a logical explanation, of course. Many young, college-educated white urbanites find themselves making less money than the prestige of their degrees would indicate they should. In political science, there is a well-established link between unmet rising expectations and revolutionary sentiment: it is rarely the poor who are most prone to revolutionary violence, but those who feel they ought to be in the elite and are not. In economic terms, the U.S. is currently producing more college-educated white progressives than there are college-educated white progressive jobs. Elite overproduction is a major driver of DSA sentiment. Meanwhile, African American politics is less interested in revolutionary sentiment than in brick-and-mortar politics: in short, less anti-Israel speechifying, more bringing home the bacon to the district. The Democrats have a five-alarm fire with respect to antisemitism; the path back to sanity runs through African American and working-class voters who care more about playgrounds and potholes than Palestine.

Republican primaries offer less comprehensive data on the status of Israel in the party. In part, that’s because Republicans are simply less preoccupied by the issue than Democrats. Donald Trump remains the center of gravity for the Republican primary electorate. Right now, Trump is pro-Israel, at least in part because he’s still quite popular with Israelis, and because the anti-Israel and antisemitic right is turning against Trump.

That said, Florida does offer a few useful data points about the current state of Republican primary politics. In the Florida gubernatorial race, the Tucker-Fuentes right was represented by James Fishback, an investor-turned-antisemitic conspiracy theorist and “blame Israel first” candidate. Foreign policy is a decidedly odd choice to focus on when one is running for governor, but Fishback made it a centerpiece of his uphill race against the front-runner, Rep. Byron Donalds. In Florida’s Sixth Congressional District, recently elected incumbent Randy Fine faced off against professional playboy-turned-antisemitic conspiracy theorist Dan Bilzerian. Fine himself is very pro-Israel, so reporting billed this as a referendum on the party’s pro-Israel tilt. It must be said that Fine is not originally from the district and has a reputation for being combative and controversial.

Fine and Donalds won their respective races and did so quite comfortably. More instructive is the vote share Fishback and Bilzerian received: 10% for Fishback and 18% for Bilzerian. That 18% figure looks troubling, but there is a curious data point. In Marion County, which is in the Sixth District, Fishback and Bilzerian received almost the same number of raw votes: 4,092 for Fishback and 4,175 for Bilzerian. There was a significant undervote in the congressional primary compared to the gubernatorial, and this undervote accounts for virtually all of Bilzerian’s higher percentage relative to Fishback. If Marion County’s results are indicative of the entire district, the universe of Fishback-Bilzerian voters is around 10% of a midterm primary electorate, but that voting base remains consistent in races further down the ballot.

This is not a five-alarm fire. Granted, 10% is a higher percentage of antisemitism than mainstream Republicans should find comfortable. Also granted, that number could be higher in states with a lower Jewish population and fewer churchgoing evangelicals, a group that has been historically resistant to antisemitic voting. That said, in no universe is this a majority, or even close. Candidates who have flirted with or embraced antisemitism in the past have fared poorly outside of Florida in this and other cycles. Steve King of Iowa lost his seat when his affiliations with antisemitic figures became widely known. Thomas Massie, the most stridently anti-Israel member of the House delegation, lost his primary in Kentucky, though his opposition to Trump, and Trump’s support of his primary challenger, was likely the main driver. Finally, in Indiana, an attempted comeback by Rep. Jeff Hofstetler, in which opposition to the U.S.-Israel relationship was a major factor in his candidacy, failed to make a significant impact on the primary.

For all their online prominence, the Tucker-Fuentes right has thus far demonstrated almost no electoral success. This should lead us to question claims that they “delivered the 2024 election to Trump.” Kamala Harris underperformed Joe Biden in every demographic category aside from white women, an outcome hardly attributable to the online right given their electoral performance in every other election. All that said, it would be premature to declare the online right electorally irrelevant. After all, 10% of a Republican primary electorate may not be enough to win outright, but it could be the electoral margin between two candidates if they divide the rest of the base evenly. More troubling, that 10% skews younger and more male than the general Republican primary electorate. This opens a distinct possibility that, while Fishback-Bilzerian voters will not play a significant role in the 2028 Republican primary, their influence could grow over time.

Those concerned about the growth of antisemitism in both parties have a lot of work to do, but the tasks facing them are different. Democrats in this position are facing an immediate five-alarm fire with implications for this electoral cycle and beyond. It is very likely that any Democratic House majority will rest on the votes of antisemitic members from deep blue districts who, feeling as though the party is going their way, will seek to pull it further and faster. At the same time, barring a blue tsunami, the majority-makers for Democrats will be relative moderates from districts where opposition to Israel may be a liability. Should Elaine Luria win her race against Jen Kiggans here in Hampton Roads (a plausible but far from certain outcome as of this writing), she can look forward to two years in which members of her own caucus will attempt to make her choose between party loyalty and her long-standing support for Israel, born of Jewish identity. At the same time, Democrats have smartly stacked their primary calendar against the DSA, perhaps unintentionally, by front-loading African American-heavy South Carolina and Georgia. It remains for the non-DSA elements of the party (the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, as opposed to its socialist wing) to consolidate behind a candidate capable of winning.

For Republicans, the situation is simpler in the short term. As of this writing, Vice President JD Vance is the nominal front-runner, based on the assumption that he will receive Trump’s endorsement. While he has made some conciliatory noises toward pro-Israel Republicans, who remain a majority of his primary electorate, his friendship with Tucker Carlson, whether genuine or political, poses continued risk as Tucker drifts further away from not only the Republican base, but Trump himself. Tucker’s endorsement of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan shows the beginning of a potential convergence between Fishback voters and the DSA centered on opposition to Israel. Cynical conservatives might point out here that many of the “podcast bros” who jumped on the Trump train in 2024 were Bernie supporters in 2016. Vance cannot rely on such people as a winning part of his coalition, and continuing to court them weakens his appeal to the demographic group most likely to decide the nomination in 2028: evangelicals over the age of fifty.

In the long term, it’s almost impossible to determine what role the 10% of Republican primary voters who back alt-right candidates will play. If one believes the discourse of very young, very online, right-coded men, this cohort will inevitably grow to take over the party. That said, there are ample reasons to be skeptical of this discourse, beyond its tendency to veer into conspiracy theorizing. The Republican Party is comparatively immune to youth politics, men aged 18 to 29 are one of the least likely demographics to vote in primaries, and the issue mix that motivates younger voters is also the most susceptible to change over time. Republicans concerned about antisemitism in their ranks should certainly focus on the long game of voter education, coalition expansion, and developing policies that address the underlying economic anxieties and systemic distrust that led to conspiracy theories. Still, for Republicans, the data suggests that the die is not yet cast, and there is ample time before the problem the GOP faces becomes a house fire of the magnitude the Democrats are facing.