Once again: on caring about how Jews vote
Back in December I wrote a lengthy post on the “Jewish vote” – how much people seem to care about that statistic, and the amount in terms of numbers. I strongly suggest you read that post now; it’s not particularly long but it covers a fair amount of territory.
I noticed in today’s open thread that the subject came up once again, as it so often does.
For example, commenter “Rufus T. Firefly” asks this question in response to commenter “sdferr’s” mention of Israel’s reaction to the Biden administration’s abstention in a Security Council vote on the Gaza War:
Yet, do you predict there will be much change in the voting habits of Jewish Americans this November?
The response from “sdferr” went like this:
It’s not within my ken, rufus — quite apart from my general reluctance to make predictions.
Even so, the way matters between the Bidenettes and Israel are going I won’t be surprised if Jewish voters start to change their preferences in large numbers this election season.
“Rufus T. Firefly” replied:
Unfortunately many people prefer punishing an enemy to embracing a compatriot. I think far too many American Jews still enjoy the two dimensional cartoon of an evil Trump coming for their freedoms over the reality that his administration was one of the most beneficial for the Jewish American cause in U.S. history.
Again, I suggest anyone interested in this topic read my post from this past December. But I also want to call your attention to a poll taken a month ago in New York City, a solidly blue town:
In a poll conducted by Siena College and released on Tuesday, a group of New York Jewish voters were asked about various public policies in the state of New York as well as candidate preferences for the upcoming national elections. The results were surprising – according to the poll, New York Jews prefer Trump at 53 percent and Biden at 44 percent.
Make of it what you will – after all, it’s only one poll. But it was taken before things got even worse in terms of this administration’s attitude towards Israel. I can’t find any other recent polls on the subject.
Like sdferr, I’m reluctant to make predictions. But the poll is very interesting. Of course, as I’ve pointed out many times, the more religious Jews are the more they are likely to vote Republican. For example, in 2020:
Orthodox Jews, however, stand out as a small subgroup (roughly one-in-ten Jewish adults) whose political profile is virtually the reverse of Jews as a whole: 60% of Orthodox Jews describe their political views as conservative, 75% identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP, and 81% approved of Trump’s job performance at the time of the survey.
A majority of all Jews surveyed, including more than half of Democrats, said they considered Trump friendly toward the state of Israel. Yet only about one-third (31%) said he was friendly toward Jews in the United States, and 37% described him as unfriendly toward U.S. Jews; the remainder saw him as neutral. Orthodox Jews, again, were a major exception: 77% said Trump was friendly to Jews in the United States, and nearly all the rest said he was neutral. Just 2% of Orthodox respondents described him as unfriendly to Jewish Americans.
And in October of 2020 came this poll result:
The survey from the community’s Ami Magazine found that a whopping 83 percent of Orthodox Jews said they will vote for Trump, compared to just 13% who said they’d support the Democratic Party’s nominee, Joe Biden. Four percent of respondents are undecided, with just 20 days remaining until the election
The poll also found that 76% of respondents believe the media is unfair to the president, while 14% said they believe that the press is mostly fair to Trump.
I will also reiterate that most Jews in the US live in large blue cities and vote pretty much as other residents of those cities vote. And a great many Jews are ethnic Jews only.
NOTE: I also strongly recommend this previous post of mine.
I don’t pretend to have in depth knowledge on this subject, so hesitate to expound too authoritatively on it, but I think Professor Allan Dershowitz’ experience over the past 6 years or so is worth noting. He has made some extremely well reasoned, purely legal statements that are favorable to Trump and he has been nearly completely ostracized from polite and impolite society. He was once a celebrated, Jewish American figure and is now persona non grata in the circles he once traveled in.
How many people are willing to suffer that fate?
Neo has suffered similarly for her courage to speak out for the truth.
There is a reason solitary confinement is reserved as the worst punishment in our prison system. It is devastating to we humans and few have the strength to withstand ostracization and isolation.
“I can’t find any other recent polls on the subject” referring to a lack of recent polls on Jewish voting patterns in light of recent developments.
You don’t ask questions if you don’t want to hear the answer.
More importantly, somewhere between 25 and 50% of contributions to the DNC comes from Jews. Once that ball stops rolling, it will be difficult to start again.
The Left and it’s political arm the democrat party do not care about the Jewish vote. They only care about Jewish donations but since those donations come from secular Jews it’s unlikely to be much of a concern.
West TX Intermediate Crude:
Who doesn’t want to hear the answer? A lot of people want to hear the answer both on left and right. The answer in the only poll we have is that Jews are changing their votes. That would be an important thing for all sides to know.
And this business about contributions to the DNC is a topic I’ve written about before, in this previous post. It’s not quite what you’d imagine – including the fact that Jews give a lot to the Republicans, too. Please read the whole thing.
“…according to the poll, New York Jews prefer Trump at 53 percent and Biden at 44 percent.”
From the poll link: “According to analysts, Jews comprised only 8% of the large sample of 806 people polled.”
I don’t know how much weight I would give to a poll of 64 people.
Neo-
I’m not saying that nobody wants to know how Jewish voting patterns are shifting, but the original poll was taken by Siena College. I know nothing about Sienna College, but I know a lot about the political leanings of colleges in general. These sentiments are not congruent with the preferences of most college-associated people; I don’t think that Sienna wants to know. I agree that it will be useful for both sides to know, but apparently it’s not important enough for Sienna or anyone else to ask. Maybe Rasmussen will try to find out.
With respect to the contributions, I have read just about everything you have written for a couple of years, including the posts you linked. As you noted, there is a lot of sloppy reporting, but the consensus is that Jews contribute a lot more to Ds than Rs, maybe twice as much. I hope that will change; we just don’t know. As you have noted, changing a few, or many, Jewish votes is not likely to change the outcome of many races due to the geographic distribution of Jewish voters, but their money can be used wherever needed.
I’m Jewish and have only voted for one Democrat in my 42 years of voting. It was a local election and I came to regret it. I stay away from politics with family but I’d say about 2/3 are left wingers and 1/3 right wingers. The younger generation I’m not sure about. I spoke to one of the right wingers during Thanksgiving and he said there is a definite shift to the right.
The hate for Trump is strong even though he’s been pro Israel. I think DeSantis or Haley would be better at gaining their support. I also think there has been a slow shift to the right in the Jewish community going back about 15 years.
Well, given the state of ‘large Blue Cities’, logic would seem to dictate many habitual Democrat resident/voters would change their votes this fall regardless of the situation in Israel. But, my thinking does not always parallel that of others.
So my position on the behavior of any segment of the electorate is “assume nothing, and you won’t be surprised by anything”.
For instance, I was poking some liberal family members, who are Facebook devotees, with the news of Zuckerberg’s $300M yacht. While some of these folks tend to rail against corporate price gouging, and executive greed; e.g. big pharma and big oil; they did not connect any dots. One said, “but we don’t pay for Facebook”. The fact that Facebook lives off of advertising, and every dollar spent on advertising is paid by consumers is just a step farther than they could go. Personal logic barriers are erected on a foundation of emotion.
Being a Jew in America meant oppression and bigotry. The teen movie, “Porky’s,” which absolutely cannot be remade today, showed that.
Mark Wuack from Meaning in History substact is furthering that. He is a retired FBI agent that is clearly pro Russia and anti-Israel. He is also Catholic. Granted, many US Jews are anti Israel.
What’s ironic about this is Catholics in the United States were subject to the same bigotry that Jews in the US experienced, to the point that JFK was politically attacked for not being able to support the US above the Vatican as President of the United States.
Right now, Mark Wuack is expressing that Israel and Jews control American foreign policies and military actions contra to Russia.
My view is he is full of crap due to his familial, cultural, and religious pronunciations. Yes, he is anti global war. That’s true, except when it comes to Russia, a nation that the US has effed with since the wall fell.
I highlighted Mark because it ties into Israel, Jews, and the US. Israel and the US, according to Mark, must restrain … Russia? Never.
What’s ironic about all this is he turned in his brother in law for spying for the Soviet Union when his brother in law was a Soviet Union spy when his brother in law was an FBI agent. Mark was an FBI agent then too
Ultimately, my point is people are complicated and THAT complication interferes with rational thought. And that complication can and often does lead to bigotry or worse.
I also think there has been a slow shift to the right in the Jewish community going back about 15 years.
–Mattsky
I think this is the way it works — slowly. However, like Hemingway’s now famous line about bankruptcy:
_______________________________
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
–Ernest Hemingway, “The Sun Also Rises”(1926)
_______________________________
We haven’t yet reached the suddenly part, but we may.
The lurking unasked poll question: “How much election fraud are you willing to tolerate generally vs special occasions, such as when you-know-who is on the ballot?”
It’s a conversation we should have.
West TX Intermediate Crude:
Siena is a regular pollster specializing in polling New York state. See this. They are no more biased than any other pollsters and seem MORE interested in this question, not less, since they’re one of the very few doing polls on it.
In addition, about contributions from Jews and the totals: a relatively small number contributes a large amount. It’s not “the Jews” in general:
138 of the families gave to GOP candidates and 20 families gave to Democrats.
https://twitter.com/AGAndrewBailey/status/1772329216165466567
My recently deceased “Jewish mother,” a Sephardic Jew from Morocco who married a US Navy enlisted man, was a straight-ticket Democrat all her voting life. But she voted for Trump in 2020. There were probably two reasons for her change. First, she didn’t like the “mostly peaceful” analysis of so many Democrats to the urban riots in 2020. Second, she liked Trump’s support of Israel. As she has a lot of relatives in Israel, that counts. (When a fellow homeowner, a Muslim from Morocco, had his mother visit, she got together with his mother to discuss the old country.)
Yes mark hates jews and arabs almost equally we thought he had gotten this out of his system
My recently deceased “Jewish mother,” a Sephardic Jew from Morocco who married a US Navy enlisted man…
Gringo:
Fascinating. I’d love to hear more in OT sometime.
Would an ethnic-only Jew vote differently from non- Jews of whichever world he inhabits? If so, why?
I don’t expect drastic changes in the Jewish vote which is why I don’t care when they’re attacked from the left. They’ll never the address the gollum of their own creation and will keep pushing DIE, left wing causes, mass immigration brining in millions wilthout any vetting and no push for assimilation. The Democratic Party has pushed tribalism for decades and then is astonished when it turns on them.
How many Jews in the Senate will vote against the radical Muslim Biden nominated as judge? So don’t complain to me when the Tribe and the leftists go open anti-Semitic.
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/releases/jewish-groups-underscore-support-for-adeel-mangi-to-serve-as-circuit-court-judge
So “Biden” still gets a whopping 44% worth of support.
Imagine that.
It’s the power of propaganda.
A cousin of mine told me not too long ago that he’s not too happy with “Biden”‘s foreign policy…but he’s pleased with how the domestic side is going(!)
He’s not stupid.
(So I try to mitigate it all by telling me he’s just brainwashed…like so many others.)
But how do you brainwash some of the most intelligent, caring, compassionate, talented people going? (And so many of them, at that…)
…Well, as long as you asked, the answer is: Just look very carefully at what the Democratic Party and its Media/High Tech Cohort have been doing over the past 15-odd years…and especially since 2016—the incessant, constant, unyielding multi-front onslaught buttressed by the most corrupt media in American history….
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
And in more Horse Dewormer(TM) news….is there anything it CAN’T do?
“Ivermectin Could Be a ‘Powerful Drug’ for Fighting Cancer, Here’s Why;
“Different from many conventional cancer therapies, ivermectin kills cancer cells by enhancing immune response.”—
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/ivermectin-could-be-a-powerful-drug-for-fighting-cancer-heres-why-5585682
(Sarc) It has been widely reported that Unicorns are immune to cancer (despite their diet of plutonium and fondness for fission products). What can we learn from Unicorns?
At a time when national elections can be stolen in a few key districts by the use of manufactured mail-in ballots the voting preferences of any group are irrelevant.
There are about 6.3 million Jews in the US today, less than 1/3 the number of Asian-Americans in the US and less than 1/5 the number of Mexican-Americans.
1.6 million Jews live in New York City, a deep blue metro. 0.5 million live in Los Angeles, a deep blue metro. 0.3 million live in Chicago, a deep blue metro. 0.5 million in Boston and the Bay area, deep blue metros. 0.2 million in Washington D. C., a deep blue metro.
Having established that about 50% of the 6.3 million American Jews live in deep blue metros, I don’t think it’s easy to make a case that more Jews voting Republican has electoral significance.
“Caring about how Jews vote” may make sense if you are thinking about politically impactful behavior that is not actually voting, and using the word “voting” to stand in for that behavior–activism, donations, etc. In that field it may well be true that Jews punch above their weight in the population, but actual voting seems to be a negligible factor in national elections due to the small number of Jews and the places where they are concentrated.
But Jews moving rightward might make a difference in how those blue cities are governed, maybe get more machine-politician types who at least clean up the streets and see the trash doesn’t pile up, instead of leftist ideologues. But it’s not like they could flip those cities red.
Based on the past 2,500 to 3,000 years of Jewish history it appears to me that many modern Jews are fearful of nationalist movements. When “blood and soil” becomes a rallying cry and citizens start looking for a scapegoat, time and time again the “Jews” become a target.
I don’t believe any anti-semitism was intended by whomever engineered the MAGA slogan, nor do I think those who embrace it are any more anti-semitic than other cross sections of the American public, but “Make America Great Again…” It comes across as “blood and soil-ish.” I’ve heard more than one anti-Trump’er state that it is code for “Make America White or WASPy Again.”
To people who feel like outsiders from the “in” group the idea of a MAGA rally can be off-putting. Especially if one’s impressions of what they are come solely from corporate media. Negative statements about Mexicans and Mexico, Muslims, sh*t hole countries… It sounds like the natives (read christian white folk) are getting restless.
What is ironic about this, specifically regarding DJT and today’s Democrat party; the Democrats are actually the party selling out the Jews and DJT was an unashamed and unafraid defender of Israel. Even Evangelical Christian George Bush II didn’t move the U.S. embassy to Israel!
But the Corporate media and Democrat party keep inflating fears that “MAGA” and “Extreme MAGA” is a burgeoning nationalist movement and their messaging is very effective. This is why I doubt we will see a significant swing in Jewish voting patterns this November.
Niketas Choniates @8:51am,
Yes, but Jewish people have an outsized influence on the culture. Those blue cities you list are also the engines of American news, advertising, television, movie and music production. John Nolte at Breitbart calls it the “sucker punch.” When you are watching something that is not even political in nature and then suddenly, out of left field, some message about Republicans being fools, or Donald Trump being racist.
What if Larry David, the co-creator of “Seinfeld,” creator, writer and lead actor of the hit show, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” said something favorable about Trump or Republicans? What could even tacit support from people like him mean for an election?
However, instead, we have this: https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/alan-dershowitz-confirms-larry-david-fight-disgusting-1235321343/
@9:32am … “didn’t move the U.S. embassy to Israel,” should be: …”didn’t move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem!.”
I’d be pleased if American Jews in general figured out who their adversaries are not. Their adversaries are (1) people who want to kill and dispossess their co-ethnics abroad, (2) people who want to seize their property; (3) people who want to apply various contrivances to reduce their chance of being admitted, hired, or promoted; (4) people who want to subject them to random violence; (5) people behaving in ways that damage the reputation of American Jewry (Bob Iger, I’m looking at you). Among those who are not their adversaries are the Huckabees, father and daughter.
My old law firm was predominantly Jewish and also, like most law firms I suppose, predominantly Democratic. This is information from 25+ years ago, but the very few Republicans there stood out like a sore thumb. If you can get polls of NY Jews suggesting a majority preference for Trump these days, I’m stunned. The Democrats had to blow things in a gobsmacking way to pull that off.
Being a Jew in America meant oppression and bigotry.
==
American Jews have never been oppressed and inter-ethnic antagonisms are part of the human condition.
@Rufus:Yes, but Jewish people have an outsized influence on the culture.
That’s why I said Jewish voting doesn’t matter. Those few Jews who have outsize influence on culture are not typical of American Jews in probably any way. If 90% of working-class and middle-class American Jews vote for Trump that’s not going to influence Hollywood Jews like Larry David at all, in addition to not moving the needle on any national election.
Dershowitz today: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/387403
He doesn’t understand (just as most people do not understand) the root of the Bidenettes’ middle-east policy (appeasing Iran, to spell it out); but as many do, misattributes it to concern over voters. It just ain’t soap; it won’t wash. Still, he does get the interests of Israel in the narrower picture vis a vis Hamas, which isn’t a small thing, I suppose.
this is who will be in charge of the red cross,
https://twitter.com/UNWatch/status/1772647380594163817?s=20