Democrats lost share of the Jewish vote compared to 2020

(JNS) — A poll of Jewish voters in the 2024 election suggests that President-elect Donald Trump made modest gains among Jews over his Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris. 

The non-partisan Jewish Electorate Institute published the responses from a national survey of 1,000 Jewish respondents taken between Oct. 30 and Nov. 8. It found that 71 percent of Jewish voters went for Harris and 26 percent voted for Trump.

“Jewish voters continue to support Democratic candidates by a substantial margin, while Republicans have made modest gains in recent cycles,” the Jewish Electorate Institute stated. “Democrats turned in their weakest performance among Jewish voters since 2012, with some polls indicating drop-offs in Jewish support ranging from four to 11 points over 2012 to 2024.”

To conduct the poll, JEI commissioned the Mellman Group, which is run by Mark Mellman, the president of Democratic Majority for Israel.

The poll adds to the growing and hotly disputed set of data points about how Jews voted in the 2024 election and whether there was any significant shift in support of Donald Trump.

According to the poll, Orthodox voters were the only Jewish denominational demographic vote overwhelmingly in favor of Trump, at 74 percent. 

Trump also won among those Jews who identify most strongly with Israel, and who cited Israel as a key reason for their support, with 48 percent of all respondents saying that the former president would be more supportive of Israel than U.S. President Joe Biden has been.

Reform, Conservative and non-denominational and unaffiliated Jews all voted strongly for Harris at a rate of 84 percent, 75 percent and 70 percent, respectively.

Those results would make non-Orthodox Jews one of the most reliable constituencies for Democrats in America in this cycle, with nearly every other socio-economic group in the country swinging towards Trump in 2024 compared to past elections. 

That swing was perhaps most remarkable among Hispanic voters, who shifted towards Trump by 25 points over his showing in 2020, per Edison Research’s national election pool exit poll.

Other exit polling of Jewish voters showed better results for the Republican, but nothing as definitive as the clear nationwide shift among Hispanics. The Fox News voter analysis had Trump winning 32% of the Jewish electorate, which would be the best showing for a Republican presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988, but only a two percentage point improvement for Trump since 2020.

Another poll of Jewish voters commissioned by the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition had the race much closer in some states than in national polling, with Harris winning by just 7 points among Jews in Pennsylvania and 8 points in New York and failing to win a majority of Jewish voters.

The conflicting polls have led to contradictory claims from Jewish groups.

“Mainstream Jewish voters remain a steadfast pillar of Democratic support, rejecting the MAGA agenda despite cynical efforts to divide our community with fear-mongering over Israel and antisemitism,” wrote J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami on Nov. 7, touting a poll that matched the vote split of JEI’s poll.

Teach Coalition, whose poll used a different screening methodology to identify “Jewish voters” than the other polls, reached the opposite conclusion.

“Jewish votes are up for grabs in key contested races and states,” the group wrote. “They are not voting monolithically or overwhelmingly Democratic.”

Per Pew Research Center data, Trump supporters were more than 30 percentage points likelier to believe (55 percent) that religion should not be kept separate from government policies, compared to 87 percent for Harris supporters.

Three quarters of Trump supporters said that he had clearly explained his policies and plans on the war between Israel and Hamas (17 percent of Harris supporters said that he had), while just 57 percent of Harris supporters said that she had explained her views on the war clearly and only 7 percent of Trump supporters agreeing that she had, per Pew.