Republicans (12 percent) and Independents (19 percent) were far less inclined than Democrats to say that Biden was handing Israel “just right.”

But they also were more likely to say he needed to be tougher on America’s longtime ally. Thirty-four percent of all respondents — Democrats, Republicans and Independents — said Biden was not tough enough, while just 17 percent said he was being too tough.

The data, conducted before news that Iran launched a retaliatory strike against Israel on Saturday, suggests that the conventional wisdom that U.S. presidents must be in lockstep with Israel could be wrong, at least in the current moment. Biden had been extremely reluctant to show daylight between his government and that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But as the war against Hamas has dragged on — and as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has worsened — he and his team have been increasingly critical.

The Israel-Hamas war has become not just the Biden administration’s thorniest foreign policy issue but a major political liability for the president back home as well. That is especially true when it comes to Biden’s base, which has soured deeply on Israeli leadership.

Twenty-two percent of Democratic respondents said they’re more sympathetic toward Palestinians in the conflict, while 16 percent said they’re more sympathetic with Israelis (44 percent of respondents said they sympathize with both groups). That made Democrats the only political group where sympathy for Palestinians was a plurality.

Republicans and Independents, by contrast, were more likely to side with Israelis. Nearly half of all Republicans (45 percent) said they sympathize with Israelis, while 25 percent of Independents said the same. Just seven percent of Republicans felt more for the Palestinians, compared to 13 percent of Independents.

There’s also a significant generational divide: 33 percent of Gen Z voters — those born in the mid-to-late 90s — said they’re more sympathetic toward Palestinians, while eight percent of Baby Boomers said the same. On the flip side, 15 percent of Gen Zers said they’re more sympathetic toward the Israelis, compared to 40 percent of Baby Boomers.

Since the Hamas militant group launched a surprise attack on Israeli soil in October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has responded with a widespread military operation in the Gaza Strip, killing over 30,000 Palestinians to date, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry. Most of those killed have been women and children.

Over the course of the war, the White House has slowly shifted toward a position aligning with the Democratic respondents. In the early days of the conflict, administration officials emphasized Israel’s right to defend itself and repeatedly said they wouldn’t condition aid to Israel.

Their tone has changed in recent weeks — especially since the deadly Israeli strike on World Central Kitchen workers in early April, which killed an American-Canadian dual citizen — as the administration signaled it’s open to a policy shift toward Israel if its military doesn’t do more to protect civilians and allow aid into Gaza.

The POLITICO-Morning Consult poll showed that Democrats are more likely to support stopping all U.S. aid to Israel in response to its conduct, with 41 percent saying they support doing so, 33 percent saying they oppose doing so, and 44 percent saying they’re unsure if they do.

Overall, 33 percent of all respondents said they’d be in favor of cutting off all aid, while 44 percent said they oppose the idea. More popular is a proposal to only provide weapons to Israel “if they minimize Palestinian casualties,” with 40 percent saying they’d support such a policy, 33 percent saying they’d oppose it.

The poll (toplines, crosstabs) was conducted April 5-7, surveying 6,004 registered voters via opt-in online panels. The overall margin of error is plus or minus 1 percentage point, with slightly higher margins of error for subgroups like self-identified partisan identification.

The Biden administration so far has been unwilling to withhold military assistance to Israel, despite a growing number of powerful Democrat lawmakers urging the administration to do so. Those lawmakers argue that Israel has broken international humanitarian law and should be cut off from U.S. assistance, while the State Department says it hasn’t finished assessing whether or not any laws have been broken.

Aid groups, including those who have been affected by Israel dropping U.S.-manufactured bombs near their sites, have also criticized the U.S. for refusing to use their leverage to ensure Israel allows more aid into the Gaza Strip. This week, long processing delays of trucks entering Gaza have created a backlog of aid, thwarting the distribution of food and medical aid to more than 2.2 million people, aid workers said.

“The U.S. and others are not using the full force of their leverage, including the potential pressure they can put through curtailing supplies of military weapons and other military supplies, to open up aid access,” Ciarán Donnelly, a senior vice president at the International Rescue Committee, told POLITICO.