Obama and the Jewish Vote

An AJC poll shows 65 percent of Jews nationwide support Obama, 24 percent support Romney, and 10 percent are undecided. (I assume a rounding error accounts for the missing one percent.)

The poll, conducted Sept. 6-17 among 1,040 Jewish voters nationwide, found Obama doing better than Romney among Jews of all religious backgrounds with the exception of the Orthodox, who favored the Republican nominee. Taking into account the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points, the poll's overall finding regarding the state of the Jewish vote is similar to other recent polling from Gallup and elsewhere. Another recent poll by the AJC of registered Jewish voters in Florida found 69 percent supporting Obama and 25 percent for Romney.

 These statistics matter in Florida, a must-win highly Jewish state. I doubt whether Obama polls at 69 percent in Florida now, after his highly-watched trouncing October 3rd. Still, he will win the majority of the Jewish vote. What I find most fascinating is how his Jewish support has changed since Obama's first term. Here is the Jewish voting record for 88 years of U.S. presidential elections ( from the Jewish Virtual Library, link here):

Election Year	Candidates	Jewish Vote*	Total Vote*		Election Year	Candidates	Jewish Vote*	Total Vote*
2008	McCain (R)	22	46		1960	Nixon (R)	18	50
	Obama (D)	78	52			Kennedy (D)	82	50
2004	Bush (R)	24	51		1956	Eisenhower (R)	40	57
	Kerry (D)	76	48			Stevenson (D)	60	42
2000	Bush (R)	19	48		1952	Eisenhower (R)	36	55
	Gore (D)	79	48			Stevenson (D)	64	44
1996	Dole (R)	16	41		1948	Dewey (R)	10	45
	Clinton (D)	78	49			Truman (D)	75	50
	Perot (I)	3	8			Wallace (Progressive)	15	2
1992	Bush (R)	11	37		1944	Dewey (R)	10	46
	Clinton (D)	80	43			Roosevelt (D)	90	53
1988	Bush (R)	35	53		1940	Wilkie (R)	10	45
	Dukakis (D)	64	46			Roosevelt (D)	90	55
1984	Reagan (R)	31	59		1936	Landon (R)	15	37
	Mondale (D)	67	41			Roosevelt (D)	85	61
1980	Reagan (R)	39	51		1932	Hoover (R)	18	40
	Carter (D)	45	41			Roosevelt (D)	82	57
1976	Ford (R)	27	48		1928	Hoover (R)	28	58
	Carter (D)	71	50			Smith (D)	72	41
1972	Nixon (R)	35	61		1924	Coolidge (R)	27	54
	McGovern (D)	65	38			Davis (D)	51	29
1968	Nixon (R)	17	43		1920	Harding (R)	43	60
	Humphrey (D)	81	43			Cox (D)	19	34
	Wallace (I)	2	14			Debs (Socialist)	38	3
1964	Goldwater (R)	10	38
	Johnson (D)	90	61

Jews have voted heavily Democratic for generations. As much as 80 to 90 percent of the Jewish vote goes to popular Democratic candidates. However, Obama is probably not going to win the 78 percent of the Jewish vote that went for him in the 2008 election. Most likely he will win about 72 percent of the Jewish vote, a significant decline. (I am taking the AJC poll numbers and giving Obama seven percent out of the ten percent currently undecided.) One must go back 34 years, to the days of the Reagan juggernaut to find Jewish voters supporting the Democratic candidate so weakly. Why?

An increasingly high number of Jews are voting against Obama for the same reason that roughly half the electorate is voting against Obama--the bad economy. Most Jews like his unfailingly liberal views on health care, energy and social policies. The high unemployment rate and low level of GDP growth trumps those issues. The magic of the 2008 election is gone, and negative campaigning is back.

Secondly, Obama's support of Israel seems more tenuous than it really is, mostly because of his poor relations with Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu. (See my previous comments on that here.)

At this point Obama can't do much to heal the economy, but if he loses Florida in the election, he may wish that he met in late September with Netanyahu instead of snubbing him.

Update October 8, 2012: Mitt Romney, in a foreign policy speech, keyed in on the Obama-Netanyahu split. He said, "The relationship between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel, for example -- our closest ally in the region -- has suffered great strains. The president explicitly stated that his goal was to put "daylight" between the United States and Israel, and he succeeded. This is a dangerous situation that has set back the hope of peace in the Middle East and emboldened our mutual adversaries, especially Iran."

Moderate and conservative Jews may agree.