The longest bull market in history came to a crashing end on Feb. 19 as panic over the global spread of COVID-19 sent stocks into a tailspin. The S&P 500, the most common benchmark for the U.S. equity market, plunged 30% in only a month.

The outlook for stocks has arguably never been more uncertain. The situation under which we live is subject to change not just by the day, but by the hour. Although there are few places for equity investors to hide these days, Wall Street analysts are pinning their hopes on a select group of dividend stocks.

Dividends are known for adding some defensive characteristics to stocks, and so it makes sense at this time to single them out. To that end, we scoured the S&P 500 for dividend stocks with yields of more than 2%, excluding a number of extremely high yielders because of excessive current risk (such as certain energy stocks). Sometimes, a too-high yield can be a warning sign that a stock is in deep trouble.

From that pool, we focused on stocks with an average broker recommendation of Buy or better. S&P Global Market Intelligence surveys analysts' stock ratings and scores them on a five-point scale, where 1.0 equals Strong Buy and 5.0 means Strong Sell. Any score of 2.0 or lower means that analysts, on average, rate the stock a Buy. The closer the score gets to 1.0, the stronger the Buy call.

Lastly, we dug into research and analysts' estimates on the top-scoring names.

That led us to these top 25 dividend stocks, by virtue of their high analyst ratings, at this unprecedented moment in American history.

Mondelez International

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Shares in Mondelez International (MDLZ, $45.47) are down a painful 28% since the bull market top of Feb. 19 to lag the S&P 500 by about 5 percentage points. But the company was showing strong sales growth before the coronavirus hit, and Americans holed up in their homes should only increase demand for long-lived edibles.

If there was a knock on Mondelez, it was the valuation. For instance, in January, Stifel rated MDLZ at Hold because it was already trading at a significant premium to peers. Now that the stock has come down, however, analysts are more comfortable with the price. The yield, which still isn't great compared to the other top 25 dividend stocks on this list, has at least come up as a result of those declines, too.

It also helps that in late February, Mondelez bought a majority stake in Give & Go, which sells sweet baked goods in supermarkets and other retailers. Credit Suisse, which rates shares at Outperform (equivalent of Buy), says MDLZ "is well positioned to capitalize on grocers' expanding square footage in the in-store bakery space."

Analysts surveyed by S&P Global Market Intelligence expect the company to deliver average annual earnings growth of 8% over the next five years.

Eaton

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