This site places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum according to their documented positions on Palestine, Israel, and the genocide in Gaza. It is a research document: it records what candidates have said and done, and publishes the reasoning for every placement alongside it. It covers every 2026 U.S. Senate and House race, plus New York’s statewide races and dozens of its state legislative races; it doesn’t cover governor or other state and local races elsewhere.
Nothing here is a recommendation to vote for anyone, against anyone, or at all. Some readers see how undemocratic the U.S. electoral system is and choose not to vote, so as not to validate it, or write in Hind Rajab, the six-year-old killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in January 2024. The roster’s job is to make the record on Palestine, genocide, and Zionism legible.
A tier is not a grade. The number marks how far a candidate sits from the pro-Israel pole. It is not a score.
Tier 1 is not first place and Tier 6 is not last. Neither end is the top — they are two ends of a line, and the number says where on that line a candidate’s record puts them.
The obvious way to build this scale would be to measure support for Palestine. That scale would not work, because it would not distinguish anyone.
Almost no candidate for American office argues for Palestinian liberation, for the right of return, for a single democratic state, or for BDS. The positions actually available in American electoral politics run, in practice, from unconditional military support for Israel at one end to conditioning some portion of that aid at the other — and nearly everyone in the field affirms, somewhere in their record, Israel’s standing as a Jewish state. Measured on support for Palestine, the overwhelming majority of candidates would score at or near zero, indistinguishable from one another, and the scale would tell you nothing.
What does vary, and vary considerably, is the strength of a candidate’s attachment to Israel as a Jewish state — and what they are willing to do about it. Whether they will condition weapons. Whether they will call the genocide by its name. Whether they take money from the lobby, and whether they will say so. Whether Palestinian life registers in their record as a political cost to be managed or as a matter of rights.
So that is what the six tiers measure. The spectrum runs from the firmest attachment at one end to anti-Zionism at the other, because that is where the differences between American candidates actually lie.
A candidate far from the pro-Israel pole is far from it relative to the field they are running in. They are not thereby aligned with Palestinian liberation, and nothing here claims they are. The most critical end of this spectrum still sits well short of what a just settlement would require. That gap reflects how narrow the window of acceptable positions in American politics still is, and recording it plainly is part of the point of the exercise.
A short guide to the method — what each tier means and what weighs most — is on How the Ratings Work.
Each entry cites its sources, starting with the official record: congressional votes and bills, FEC filings, and candidates’ own sites and statements. For reporting we turn first to Palestinian and Arab outlets, then independent outlets, then mainstream press; pro-Israel outlets such as Jewish Insider and the Times of Israel are used only for what even they report, never as the only basis for a claim about a candidate.
This document was produced using Claude (Anthropic), a large language model, under human direction. The researcher helps determine the scope, analytical framework, tier criteria, and candidate list — though has not yet fully specified them. The research, sourcing, candidate summaries, position markers, quotes, and analytical language were substantially written by Claude, based on searches of primary campaign materials, FEC filings, news outlets, advocacy trackers, and legislative records.
Every published card’s claims have been checked against their cited sources. That checking was primarily done by AI; a blind re-check of 125 randomly chosen sentences in October 2026 found about 2% wrong and about 7% with a smaller inaccuracy. Errors, outdated information and misattributions remain possible, and the roster is intended as a research starting point, not a finished publication. Placements on the six-tier spectrum are analytical judgments rather than objective facts — a different researcher applying the same framework might reach different conclusions.
Follow the embedded source links, cross-check positions against primary sources, and treat placements as provisional. This document should not be cited as authoritative without independent verification.
Corrections are the most useful thing you can send, and a specific link — to a vote, a filing, a press release, or the candidate’s own words — moves a rating faster than anything else. The contact form is encrypted in your browser, and an email address is optional.
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