JEWISH VOTING HISTORICALLY

The standard account is that Jews voted Republican for president until 1924, a claim that focuses attention on the basis and quality of these historical estimates. Weisberg (Reference Weisberg2012) traced the sources of the standard figures (Forman Reference Forman, Sandy Maisel and Forman2004, 153) and found that they are based on only a single city (before 1940), a single survey, or a single exit poll (since 1972). Table 1 provides the revised estimates that Weisberg developed by averaging multiple data sources in each election. Most of the revisions are close to the standard figures but with notable exceptions. For example, Republican Coolidge outpolled Democrat Davis among Jews in Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia in 1924; combining data from multiple cities therefore suggests that the Republicans still won a plurality of the Jewish vote that year.

Table 1

Estimates of the Jewish Presidential Vote, 1916–2012

Source: Weisberg (Reference Weisberg2012) with National Election Pool exit polls for 2012.

Nevertheless, figures on Jewish voting are necessarily estimates. Not only is the number of Jews included in most surveys too small for high confidence, the accuracy also depends on whether the surveys happen to sample the correct proportions of both Orthodox Jews and Jews living in areas that are not predominantly Jewish.

The chart of the revised data, shown in figure 1, highlights historical shift points. Jews apparently voted predominantly Republican in the early twentieth century but became Democratic starting in 1928 (Gamm Reference Gamm1989). The very high Democratic vote during the Franklin Roosevelt elections decreased after his death (Lubell Reference Lubell1951). Jews voted more Democratic during the 1960s but less so in the 1970s and the 1980s. The Democratic vote increased again beginning in 1992, when Pat Buchanan gave his “culture war” speech at the Republican Convention.

Figure 1

Jewish Vote for President in 1916–2012 (based on Weisberg (Reference Weisberg2012), plus 2012 exit polls)

THE ISRAELI ISSUE IN THE 2012 CAMPAIGN

Jewish support for a black presidential candidate was initially uncertain in 2008, but the Jewish vote went strongly for Barack Obama: 78% according to the national exit poll and 74% according to the Solomon Project (2012), which combined state exit polls with the national exits. However, Obama appeared to be vulnerable by mid-2011 because the economy was still weak from the Great Recession and his Middle East policy was perceived as less pro-Israel than that of most recent presidents. Obama was criticized, for example, when in May 2011 he asserted that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines.” The rest of that sentence, however, followed conventional US policy when he added “with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.” Many Jews found the possibility of Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb to be an existential threat to Israel, and some considered the American reaction to be insufficient, even though Obama imposed strong sanctions on Iran.

Obama was seen as a stronger candidate by the fall of 2012 as the economy was showing signs of improvement, but the Jewish vote potentially was in play because of issues related to Israel. In contrast to the coolness between Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mitt Romney had a personal relationship with Netanyahu developed when they both worked at Boston Consulting Group. Obama rejected Netanyahu’s open pressure to “draw a red line” on Iranian movement toward a nuclear bomb. Netanyahu’s support for Romney became so apparent that some Israelis were concerned that it would damage Israel’s future standing with the United States if Obama were reelected.

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), largely financed by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, aggressively targeted Jewish voters on Romney’s behalf. It ran “buyer’s remorse” television ads featuring Jewish voters who said they had voted for Obama in 2008 but would not do so again. Billboards appeared in Jewish areas, with the lament: “Obama … Oy Vey!” The Democratic image suffered when the Party’s draft platform did not include its promise in recent platforms to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The image was further damaged when the Democratic convention took an awkward three voice votes before the convention chair ruled that an amendment reinserting that language had received the two-thirds vote required for passage.

Democrats argued that the Obama administration had given Israel more military help than any previous administration. The issue came to a head in the October 22, 2012, campaign debate when Romney repeated a Republican refrain that Obama had not visited Israel as president. Obama defended himself by pointing out that he had visited Israel in 2008, that he had gone to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial rather than attending fundraisers (as Romney did during his July 2012 visit), and that his stop at Sderot led to his support for American funding of Israel’s Iron Dome for protection against Palestinian missile attacks.

Most preelection polls showed Obama ahead among Jews, as in a 70%–25% lead in Gallup’s combined July–early September daily tracking poll. However, an Investors Business Daily/TIPP poll after the first presidential debate gave Obama only a 47% to 25% advantage, and an update found Romney ahead by 44% to 40%—although with the following disclaimer on the Jewish vote: “Small sample size; interpret with caution.”

HOW DID JEWS VOTE IN 2012?

The 2012 exit polls reported that 69% of Jews voted for Obama and 30% voted for Romney. Although only 2% of total respondents were Jewish, Jews constitute an important vote in the key battleground states of Florida and Ohio.

Two organizations conducted separate national telephone surveys of Jews after the polls closed on Election Night. J Street, a liberal advocacy group on Israel that favors a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian dispute, used Gerstein, Bocian, Agne Strategies to implement a lengthy survey of 800 Jews in its ongoing Internet panel. The RJC hired Arthur J. Finkelstein and Associates to conduct a short survey of 1,000 Jews, but it did not indicate how its sample was generated. An important caution is that such single-night polls typically have low response rates.

Dueling J Street and RJC press releases reported results that were similar to the national exit poll, although they were interpreted differently. ^{Footnote 1} J Street compared the 70% Obama vote it obtained with his 74% vote in 2008 found by the Solomon Project to emphasize his continued strong support among Jews. The RJC instead compared the 32% Romney vote it found with McCain’s 21% in the 2008 national exit poll to trumpet considerable improvement. However, the RJC press release understated the Romney showing by not removing respondents who did not state how they voted; adjusting their response tally results in a 34% Romney vote among responders (table 2). ^{Footnote 2}

Table 2

Jewish Voting in the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections

*The “corrected” values give the vote among respondents who answered the question.

Table 3 compares the composition of the voter samples, showing substantial regional, denominational, and especially age differences. ^{Footnote 3} The table also compares these samples with a probability-based telephone survey of 3,475 Jews conducted by the Pew Research Center in early 2013 (Pew Research Center 2013). The proportion of young people younger than age 40 was less than half as large in RJC’s sample as in J Street’s sample, and it was smaller than the proportion Pew found to be younger than age 30. This suggests that the RJC did not call cell phones, which is one of the problems that caused GOP preelection polls to overestimate the Romney vote. However, the real source of the few percentage points of difference between the two surveys is the different defection rates they found: the RJC showed Democratic Jews defecting to Romney at a slightly higher rate than Republican Jews defecting to Obama, whereas J Street found the opposite.

Table 3

Comparison Composition of Voters in RJC, J Street, and Pew Samples

*The first value includes only Jews by religion; the second value also includes “Jews of No Religion.”

Nevertheless, what should be stressed is how similar are the results from the exit poll, RJC, and J Street: Romney received a higher Jewish vote than McCain, although this only returned the GOP to its 1970s and 1980s levels. ^{Footnote 4}

SUBGROUP DIFFERENCES IN THE JEWISH VOTE

Although the Jewish vote has become solidly Democratic, it is not monolithic. The two Election-Night surveys afford a rare opportunity to examine differences in an election setting (table 4). Some differences mirror gaps in the electorate as a whole, such as a gender gap. An income effect was also indicated, with Romney receiving an additional 13 points of the vote of Jews with an income of at least $100,000 compared to those with an income of less than $50,000. However, the lack of consistent differences across age groups suggests that a generational-based party realignment of Jews is not in the offing.

Table 4

Romney Vote among Jews by Demographic Characteristics*

*RJC results are reconstructed to base percentages on only the people who answered the vote question.

The most important subgroup voting difference is among the major Jewish “movements”—that is, the Orthodox (more observant and more traditional), Reform (the least observant, such as in following kosher dietary rules), and Conservative (between Orthodox and Reform). Orthodox Jews (which is the smallest of the three branches) have been voting more Republican than other Jews, which is confirmed for 2012 in table 5. Moreover, Conservative Jews voted for Romney at a higher rate than Reform Jews (which is the largest branch).

Table 5

Vote Distribution and Presidential Approval by Jewish Movement

*Values for Unaffiliated/Other for the RJC poll were obtained by subtracting values for other movements from overall totals in its report.

**Percentage with an opinion who have a favorable opinion of Obama as a person.

***Percentage based on people with an opinion.

The 2013 Pew Research Center results suggest that Orthodox Jews were even more negative toward Obama (and presumably to his reelection) than the Election-Night polls show (Pew Research Center 2013). Pew found that only 38% of Orthodox Jews approved of Obama’s performance (see the bottom part of table 5), well below the level for non-Orthodox Jews and also well below the Election-Night polls. The approval figures for other Jewish denominations are generally very close to those of the Election-Night polls as well as to their Obama vote percentages. ^{Footnote 5}

Table 5 partly reflects differences in party identification among the different branches of Judaism, as shown in table 6. Orthodox and Conservative Jews are more likely than other Jews to consider themselves Republican. The Pew interviews with more than 500 Orthodox Jews found that a majority are either Republicans or lean Republican.

Table 6

Party Identification by Denominational Movement

*The Pew figures include “Jews of No Religion,” with leaners treated as partisans.

Birth-rate and intermarriage differences among Jewish denominations have potentially important political implications. Many Orthodox couples have large families, giving the Orthodox community a large growth potential, whereas the high intermarriage rate among non-Orthodox Jews could lead to an outflow among the rest of Judaism. These differences lead some demographers to expect that Orthodox Jews will eventually outnumber non-Orthodox Jews, which could shift the Jewish vote to predominantly Republican.

THE IMPACT OF THE ISRAEL ISSUE

The Election-Night polls also enable an analysis of the role of attitudes on Middle East policies. Past surveys have not found Israel to be among the primary reasons that Jews give for their votes. Some commentators expected a greater effect in 2012 because of the potential threat to Israel from Iran’s nuclear ambitions. However, that effect could be limited because Jews who are more concerned about Israel had already been voting more Republican in recent elections (Uslaner and Lichbach Reference Uslaner and Lichbach2009).

When the RJC survey asked how important issues concerning Israel were in an individual’s vote decision, 30% answered that it was very important, 46% said somewhat important, and 22% stated that it was not important. Those who considered it very important voted for Romney by a 53%-to-45% margin, whereas those who said it was either somewhat or not important voted overwhelmingly for Obama (i.e., 72% to 27% and 78% to 21%, respectively).

However, question wording matters, and the issue of Israel appears less important when a different form of the question was used. J Street asked respondents to choose the two issues from a list of 13 that they considered most important in deciding how to vote for president. Although respondents could give two answers, only 10% chose Israel, tying it for sixth place; at 2%, the issue of Iran was the least chosen issue. Those who chose Israel as one of the issues that most affected their decision split their vote 50%–50% between Obama and Romney.

The polls show considerable acceptance of Obama’s Middle East policy. Of the RJC respondents, 44% believed Obama was more pro-Israeli versus 23% pro-Palestinian. Of the J Street sample, 43% agreed with the president’s policies on the Arab–Israeli conflict and approved of the way he executes those policies; 30% agreed with his policies but did not like the execution; and 27% disagreed with his policies. Most J Street respondents thought Obama would do a better job than Romney on dealing with the issues of Israel (i.e., 53% to 31%) and Iran (i.e., 58% to 26%).

WHY ARE JEWS STILL VOTING DEMOCRATIC?

Many explanations have been offered about why Jews vote Democratic. Jewish values have often been cited to explain why Jews are liberals and therefore support the Democratic Party (Fuchs Reference Fuchs1956). However, as Wald (Reference Wald2011) pointed out, that explanation fails because Jews do not necessarily support Leftist parties in other countries. Wald instead offers an important argument that the Democratic Party is favored because it is more liberal on church–state separation, which created an environment in which American Jews can prosper.

Alternatively, Jews being Democratic could be understood as an instance of minorities feeling excluded from the Republican Party because it is perceived as not representing their interests. That possibility would fit with a 2007 survey finding of all religious minority groups (except Mormons) being overwhelmingly Democratic (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life 2008, 206); however, it does not account for some minorities (e.g., Muslims) only recently becoming Democratic.

An explanation of Jewish voting should consider an important pattern in the cumulative American National Election Studies and the cumulative General Social Surveys, as well as in large-scale surveys of Jews: that is, the proportion of politically conservative Jews who identify as Republicans is much smaller than the proportion of politically liberal Jews who consider themselves Democrats (Weisberg Reference Weisberg2011). This pattern holds in the RJC survey: only 53% of politically conservative Jews identify as Republicans compared to 81% of politically liberal Jews who identify as Democrats. It is not that Jews cannot be political conservatives; it is more that the Republican Party is not capturing their vote to the extent that a conservative party should expect support from political conservatives.

This lower level of Republican identification by Jewish political conservatives is likely due to social issues. Jewish conservatives are significantly more liberal than non-Jewish conservatives on social issues such as abortion, although Jewish and non-Jewish conservatives are similar on economic issues (Greenberg and Wald Reference Greenberg, Wald, Sandy Maisel and Forman2004). In addition, surveys show that Jews are uneasy about the Republican alliance with Evangelical Christian groups (Uslaner and Lichbach Reference Uslaner and Lichbach2009). Similarly, Jews have unfavorable attitudes toward the Tea Party by a 74%-to-12% margin (Gerstein Reference Gerstein2012), and they give it only a 26 average rating on a zero-to-100 scale (Public Religion Research Institute 2012). Associations with Evangelical Christians and the Tea Party complicate the Republican Party’s ability to nominate moderate candidates who would be more attractive to Jews.

The “tradition” of Jews voting Democratic also has sociopsychological underpinnings. When Jews began voting overwhelmingly Democratic during the New Deal and World War II, many came to feel that “we Jews are Democrats,” thereby incorporating partisanship into their group identity. Being Democratic became part of the dominant politicized social identity of American Jews. Information that counters such partisan identity is generally discounted, whereas voting Democratic is reinforced when family and friends are primarily other Democratic Jews.

Although most Jews are Democratic and vote Democratic for president, it is also important to recognize that many are Republican, consider being Republican as part of their Jewish identity, have their Republican identity reinforced by their Republican Jewish family and friends, and regularly vote Republican. They may accept Republican economic policies and/or prefer Republican positions on Israel. Some are Orthodox Jews who agree with Republican stands on school vouchers and social issues, whereas others are Jews from the former Soviet Union who oppose welfare programs. Whatever the reasons, the 30% of Jews who voted for Romney in 2012 amount to well more than a million people; therefore, they constitute an important voting group even when most Jews vote Democratic.