In a poll conducted on October 18, only 68% of Americans confirmed their belief that Hamas is a terrorist organization when asked the question: ‘From everything you've seen and heard, do you think that Hamas is or is not a terrorist organization?’
The poll, conducted by YouGov, asked 3878 American adults the question above.
The United States has categorized Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization, but not all US citizens seem to agree.
Overall, 8% of the polled adults said that Hamas was not a terrorist organization and a further 24% said they were unsure if it is.
Broken down by region, adults in the West of the US were most likely to agree that Hamas is a terrorist organization (70%), while adults in the South agreed the least (65%).
Despite the West having the highest percentage of adults believing Hamas is a terrorist organization, the West and the Northeast both share the highest percentage of adults believing Hamas is not a terrorist organization (10%).
Gender differences in categorizing Hamas
American men are more likely than American women to believe that Hamas is a terrorist organization at a percentage of 74% of males compared to only 62% of females.
However, American men are also slightly more likely to believe that Hamas is not a terrorist organization (9%) than American women (7%).
American women were nearly twice as likely to answer that they are unsure how to categorize Hamas (30%) compared to American men (17%).
The political divide in categorizing Hamas
Republican voters had the highest percentage of adults believing that Hamas is a terrorist organization at 78%, with the lowest number of adults believing this coming from the independent-voters category (60%). For voters of the Democratic party, the percentage sat at 69%.
Despite 69% of Democrats believing Hamas is a terrorist organization, the voters also have the highest number of people who don’t categorize the group as such (9%). However, the percentage of Democrats not categorizing Hamas as a terrorist organization is only marginally higher than Republican voters (7%) and Independent voters (8%).
An additional 32% of Independent voters, 22% of Democrat voters, and 15% of Republican voters said they were unsure how to categorize the group.
The age divide in categorizing Hamas
One of the greatest dividing factors in how Americans categorize Hamas is their age group, with younger adults less likely to believe Hamas is a terrorist group.
In the age category 18-29, only 50% of adults believe that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Amongst adults in the age category 30-44, the percentage stands at 58%. For adults in the category 45-64, the percentage of adults believing that Hamas is a terrorist organization is 76% and the highest percentage of adults with this belief (89%) belongs to adults aged over 65 years old.
A total of 17% of adults in the age range 28-29 believe that Hamas is not a terrorist group, and the percentage drops as the age range increases. Only 2% of adults aged above 65 years agree that Hamas is not a terrorist organization and 3% of adults aged between 45-64 years.
The youngest group of adults is also the most likely to be unsure of how to categorize Hamas (33%), with the next age category of 30-44 sharing a similar uncertainty (31%). Only 9% of adults aged above 65 and between 45-64 (21%) were unsure if Hamas is a terrorist group.
The racial divide in categorizing Hamas
Much like with age, race is also a dividing factor in the categorization of Hamas.
Only 46% of Black Americans agree that Hamas is a terrorist organization, the lowest percentage amongst all the racial categories surveyed. The percentage of Hispanic respondents is also below the national average (54%), while 78% of White people and 70% of ‘Other’ people agreed that Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Both 13% of Black respondents and ‘Other’ respondents answered that they believed Hamas was not a terrorist organization. Only 6% of White and 8% of Hispanic people answered the same.
Black respondents (41%) had the highest percentage of uncertainty in categorizing Hamas, followed by Hispanic respondents (38%), ‘Other’ respondents (17%), and White respondents (16%).