Morning Consult Counter/Consensus: Global Political Briefing, October 3, 2024

1.  Israel (Counter)

Still Mister Security.  Many predicted that Netanyahu’s political career would be an additional casualty of Hamas’ attacks on Israel last Oct. 7. But his recent bold pivot to broadening the offensive to Lebanon-based Hezbollah may have given him some breathing room. Tit-for-tat attacks accelerated from July onwards with Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr, Hezbollah’s retaliatory rocket attack, Israel’s pager attack, and most importantly the recent killing of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s senior leader.  Our data shows both the dip preceding these developments and the subsequent rebound: Remarkably,  Netanyahu is currently polling only slightly below where he was prior to Oct 7.

But we think the narrative that Netanyahu’s political fortunes have completely reversed is premature. Despite Netanyahu’s personal rebound, Israelis are far from regaining optimism about the course their country is on, as measured by the net share of adults who say Israel is headed in the right direction (chart below). We would typically expect to see this metric rebound on the heels of a major political event in tandem with approval of the leader. While this broader metric did see a slight rebound in July with the killing of Hamas leader Shukr and the operations against Hezbollah, it began to dip again in mid August and September, and at roughly -55 on a 30-day rolling average basis, is near a tracking low compared with the last several years.

While Netanyahu may be riding relatively high right now, given the underlying societal gloom inferred from our right direction metric, any misstep could lose him his current moment of grace. Iran’s missile attack on Oct. 1 — a shot across the bow warning of the possibility of a direct conflict — will necessarily up the ante at a time when our data suggests many Israelis seem to consider Netanyahu the leader they need, rather than the leader who can give them the Israel they want. 

2.  Lebanon Attacks (Counter)

Mixed messages. Diplomatic repudiation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on full display during his United Nations General Assembly speech last week, which came just days after a series of Israeli attacks targeting Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. But Israel’s initial pager-bomb and walkie-talkie attacks on Lebanese soil, and others that followed, have not drawn the global public’s ire, at least not more so than the country has already done. Average net favorability of Israel has remained relatively flat in the window surrounding the attacks (first chart below); nor have we seen a shift in preference intensity (second chart below), though the share with uncertain views of Israel increased modestly following the initial attacks. The far smaller number of civilian casualties to date compared with the conflict in Gaza, along with limited public familiarity with Hezbollah or simply conflict attention fatigue, are all possible explanations for this “dog that didn’t bark” scenario.

At the same time, public sympathy toward Hamas remains deeply negative with no improvement, underscoring that while global populations may exhibit deep sympathy for Palestinians, their support does not extend to militant organizations like Hamas, and presumably Hezbollah.

In the context of the ongoing conflict with Hamas, all of this points toward a business-as-usual scenario, with the conflict in Lebanon doing little to put further pressure on Israel from a reputational perspective. There is a possibility this could change in the coming days: Our data shows very preliminary signs of a possible downturn in net favorability toward Israel amid its just-launched ground incursion into southern Lebanon, but it remains too early to say whether the shift in sentiment will prove meaningful. Barring a substantial increase in civilian casualties, we don’t anticipate it will. 

For U.S. companies doing business in the region, and who remain worried about negative repercussions (e.g. additional boycotts) arising from newly worsening views of America amid its ongoing military support for Israel, we have yet to see such risks materialize in our data: Regional average net favorability of America in the Middle East is largely trending sideways amid the conflict with Hezbollah. But it remains substantially depressed relative to September 2023, suggesting conflict-related corporate risks persist. See our Global U.S. Reputation Tracker for the latest available data on this front when it updates later this month.

3.  Austria (Counter)

Mirror mirror. The FPÖ came out on top in Austria’s Sept. 29 elections, provisionally scoring 28.9% of the vote and sparking another round of self-reflection in Europe about the continent’s turn to the political right. The party is a clear example of a European far-right party. Some of its founders were Nazi party members and were in the SS. Parlgov’s database ranking parties on a 10-point left-right spectrum, with 10 being the furthest right, has the FPÖ at 8.3 (Germany’s AfD is at 8.8 and France’s National Rally is at 9.3). 

The election result itself is hardly a surprise. Our data has seen more Austrians citing the FPÖ as the party that most closely aligns with their own views all year, and the share doing so has steadily crept upward.

But the party’s adherents are either too shy to cop to being far-right ideologues themselves, or genuinely don’t view themselves that way. A majority of Austrians identifying the party as having views closest to their own over the last 90 days nevertheless said that they were centrists or just right of center, corresponding to values of 4 and 5 in the chart below. 

There is probably a bit of both willful denial of their true views and a genuine political misalignment between views of Austrians who voted for the FPÖ and those of the party itself. On the former, we see a similar trend of hesitancy to identify as far right among German and Dutch respondents, who tend to be more reticent in expressing strong opinions. In Germany at least, there is also still a very strong cultural taboo against identifying as right wing, dating from the Nazi period. Adherents of Germany’s far-right AfD, for example, are still quite hesitant to claim such political views themselves, with only 16% doing so — a share in line with what we see in Austria. Compare this to France, where the traditional taboo of espousing far-right views seems to be well and truly broken after recent E.U. parliamentary and snap national elections. Over half of those saying they support National Rally also say that they themselves have far-right views. Much like in France, it is also highly uncertain if the FPÖ will enter government, or if other parties will band together to shut them out. 

Austria is culturally and historically more similar to Germany than France, providing a partial explanation for Austrians’ reluctance to claim extreme views. However, in previous research we also noted that across Europe, it appears to be disillusionment with the high cost of living, perceived out-of-control immigration, and out-of-touch elites that has driven otherwise centrist voters into the arms of the far right. There is a major gap in almost every country between those who support a far-right party, and those who identify as far right themselves. Europe’s center right, take note. 

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