What happened with the Jewish vote?
It appears Jews shifted modestly to the right.
The series of unfortunate events that began October 7, 2023 in the Holy Land were obviously of world historical import, but we don’t know yet what they fully import. It’s quite likely that the end of the Great Awokening was due to American Jews turning against Wokeism in the wake of 10/7/2023 and the subsequent anti-Zionist / anti-Semitic protests by the Diverse, but the evidence is not yet conclusive.
Understanding the Jewish vote is important not because Jews are a large minority but because they are a rich, influential, energetic, and generous one. Even more important than how they vote is how Jewish donors are trending politically because they comprise a huge fraction of the biggest donors to both the Democrats and Republicans. Later on this week, I will look at the ethnicity of the top 50 donors in 2020 vs. 2024.
It’s unclear from the small sample of self-identifying Jews in the exit polls whether or not Jews moved right or left in 2024. From The Tablet:
The answer depends in part on what you mean by ‘Jewish’
by Armin Rosen
November 14, 2024… Per the National Election Pool’s exit poll, which was publicized by major news organizations, Kamala Harris captured 79% of the Jewish vote, a historically high margin. Fox News pollsters, on the other hand, tagged Jewish support for Harris at 66%, a number low enough for the Republican Jewish Committee to brag about it. Earlier this week, a survey sponsored by the Teach Coalition, the Orthodox Union-affiliated group that advocates on behalf of religious schools, found that 40% of Jews in congressional swing districts in Pennsylvania and the New York suburbs voted Republican, meaning that Jews, like a number of other historically Democratic-voting constituencies, tacked right in unprecedented numbers in the places where their votes mattered the most.
Based on Tablet’s own comparison of precinct-level numbers from the 2020 and 2024 election, Donald Trump did improve his performance in a range of Jewish neighborhoods across America. From the yeshivas of Lakewood, New Jersey, to the bagel shops of New York’s Upper West Side; from Persian Los Angeles to Venezuelan Miami; from the Detroit suburbs to the Chabadnik shchuna in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, Jewish areas voted in higher percentages for the Republican candidate than they did in 2020, which in turn was better for Republicans than 2016. The oft-cited exit poll pushed by CNN, NBC and others asserting that the Jewish vote went 79% to Harris did not include New York, New Jersey and California, which have some of the largest Jewish populations in the country. Claims that the numbers are holding steady for Democrats become more difficult to sustain after a close look at vote totals in the places where Jews actually live.
On the other hand, it’s hard to find non-ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in the U.S. where Jews demographically dominate.
For example, in Southern California, Jews peak out around a quarter or, at most, a half of the Westside of L.A. and the San Fernando Valley from Venice Beach to Agoura Hills to West Hollywood. Wealthy Jews tend to prefer for aesthetic reasons neighborhoods that are still fairly gentile.
Plus, California, as I might have mentioned once or twice over the years, is slow to count its votes.
Steve, unfinished sentence?
"Even more important than how they vote is how Jewish donors are trending politically because they comprise"
Pro-Israel Jews break more for Trump, anti-Zionist Jews don't. Trump is very strongly aligned with Israel's right wingers. The Israel-Palestinian conflict heating up pushed more pro-Israel American Jews to Trump; if tensions were low they'd go back to their usual pro-communist voting.
Pro-Israel American Jews tend to be the ones who subtly understand that Israel will be the place to flee if the West goes down or is lost by the Jews, and so they get patriotic about Israel. Call them Prepper Jews. Of course, Jews always traditionally had an "escape plan" when the pograms and inquisitions hit, but that usually meant fleeing to another Jewish community in another country, e.g. Iberian Jews fled to Amsterdam and Turkish Jewish communities when the Inquisition and Edict of Expulsion hit. But these days with the world being smaller and Israel having nukes and military, Israel will be the place Western Jews run if it all turns sideways here.
In contrast, anti-Israel Jews are usually very secular, believe in the diversity stuff, and usually have mated and moved into non-Jewish blood. The idea of fleeing to a "Jewish community" is alien to them, they will flee if it goes pear-shaped, of course, but not to specifically Jewish lands.