NEW YORK, U.S.A. — Like Chicago Cubs fans in
spring, Jewish Republicans start every presidential election season
hoping this will be their year. They hope American Jews, who have voted
overwhelmingly Democratic for decades, will start a significant shift to
the political right. But scholars who study Jewish voting patterns say
it won’t happen in 2012.
Although recent studies have found potential
for some movement toward the GOP, analysts say any revolution in the US
Jewish vote won’t occur anytime soon.
- “I would be very surprised to find that this is the transformative election,” said Jonathan Sarna, an expert in American Jewish history at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
- Surveys confirm that growth in socially conservative Orthodox Jewish communities, who tend to be GOP voters, is greater than in Jewish groups from other traditions. Russian-speaking Jews are also emerging as a strong GOP constituency, as evidenced when Republican Bob Turner won the special election to succeed disgraced New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner.
- But a generous estimate of the two groups combined would make them only a quarter of American Jews, with many living in heavily Democratic New York. Steven M. Cohen, director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at New York University’s Wagner School, predicts “status quo ante” — the way things were before — for a decade or more, at least until the many Orthodox children reach voting age.
- The enduring liberalism of Jewish voters has confounded Jewish conservatives, who tend to view support for Democrats as a youthful habit Jews should have outgrown long ago. In the 1970s and 1980s, when US Jews were becoming more assimilated and wealthier, expectations rose that they would follow the pattern of other ethnic groups and start voting Republican.
- It didn’t happen. President Barack Obama won 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008, according to exit polls. The only Democrat who failed to win a majority of Jewish voters in recent decades was President Jimmy Carter, in a three-way race in 1980 with Republican Ronald Reagan and independent John Anderson.
- This year, Republicans saw a new opening. Surveys found a softening of support for Obama among Jews, as his favorability also dipped with the American public over the economy and other issues. Polls have the president down anywhere from a few to 10 percentage points among Jewish voters compared with four years ago.
- The Republican Jewish Coalition has been hammering away at Obama with ad campaigns such as “My Buyer’s Remorse” and a video, “Perilous Times,” on Israeli security under the president. The focus has been on Obama’s frosty relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and critics’ claims that Obama is doing too little to stop Iran’s nuclear program.
Obama has repeatedly pledged his support for
Israel. His administration considers military action against Iran an
option but says all nonmilitary means of pressuring Iran must first be
exhausted.
Billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson
poured funds into the coalition, especially for outreach in the
battleground states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Adelson, a
staunch supporter of Israel, has said he would spend up to $100 million
to defeat the president.
While American Jews make up only 2 percent of the US electorate, they register and vote at a much higher rate than the general public. In Florida, the prize battleground, about 3.4 percent of state residents are Jewish.
Source: Times Of Israel
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