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It’s been a tense time for American Jews. 

Over the past year, universities have been riven by protests against Israel, including at UC Berkeley, S.F. State University and other campuses across Northern California. Resolutions calling for an Israeli cease-fire in its war against Hamas have swept through city councils across the region. Some debates have been relatively benign, while others have echoed ugly antisemitic tropes about Jewish power, money and control. 

Similar events across the country have left an impression on Americans of all stripes — not just Jews — about the problem of antisemitism. A recent YouGov poll, which set out to measure the levels of concern about a number of “national problems,” discovered that worries about antisemitism have grown considerably over the past year.

The poll found that 31% of respondents consider antisemitism a “very serious problem” in the U.S., compared with 23% in both 2022 and 2023. 

While Republicans in Congress have taken on a visible role talking about antisemitism on the American left since the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel, the poll showed that concern about antisemitism as a “very serious” problem was distributed evenly across both sides of the political spectrum.

About 35% percent of Democrats and 34% of Republicans felt that way. And those who favor Democratic nominee Kamala Harris or Republican nominee Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race were likewise quite close in their levels of concern, at 35% and 36%, respectively.

The poll of 1,138 U.S. citizens ages 18 and over conducted from Aug. 7 to 10 found that the top 10 areas of concern for respondents were inflation, homelessness, debt, corruption, drug abuse, poverty, gun violence, illegal immigration, violent crime and a lack of access to health care. The No. 1 concern was inflation, with 67% calling it a “very serious problem,” while 47% said the same about lack of access to health care. 

The poll measured people’s worries and not actual incidents or statistics. 

Antisemitism was about as concerning to respondents as property crime, sexual harassment, unemployment and lack of access to child care, according to the poll.

Breaking the numbers down further, while 31% said antisemitism was a “very serious problem,” another 31% called it a “somewhat serious problem,” and 19% said it was a “minor problem.” Only 7% said it wasn’t a problem, and 12% said they were “not sure.”

This means that 81% of Americans consider homegrown antisemitism problematic to some degree. According to Pew Research Center, Jews made up 2.4% percent of the total population of the U.S. in 2020.

A related Gallup poll released in July found that more than one in 10 American Jewish adults said they had been frequently “treated poorly or harassed” due to their religion over the past year.

Another 25% said such treatment happened occasionally. A majority of American Jews, 60%, said they feel uncomfortable sharing their religious affiliation, far more than the 25% of Americans overall who said the same.

Going deeper into the YouGov numbers, more women than men said antisemitism was “very serious,” at 34% versus 28%. Age played a role in responses as well. Among those 18 to 29, 24% saw it as “very serious,” compared with 42% of those 65 and older.

Black Americans were more likely to consider antisemitism a “very serious problem” at 36%, compared with white respondents at 32% or Hispanic respondents at 26%.

In the Bay Area, Jews have expressed concerns about showing their Jewish identity in public. The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area released a survey of local Jews just weeks after the Oct. 7 attack in Israel. EMC Research conducted the survey between Nov. 21 and Dec. 6 of 859 adults who identified as Jewish in the nine-county Bay Area.

They were asked how comfortable they felt expressing their Jewish identity in places where few others identify as Jewish — either in person or on social media. About 21% said they weren’t comfortable, another 65% said they were comfortable and the rest weren’t sure. The previous year, 15% said they weren’t comfortable expressing their identity, while 70% reported they felt comfortable doing so.