The American-Jewish vote that has been traditionally and overwhelmingly Democrat might change in a significant way in Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election. The reason is the substantial gap between the significant pro-Israel policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and those advocated by former Vice President Joe Biden.
Historically, the American-Jewish community has illustrated that when there is a discernible divide between the candidates concerning the issue of Israel, at least 10 percent swing to the candidate considered more favorable to it.
In an Aug. 27, 2019 article, Gallup senior scientist Dr. Frank Newport wrote that “about nine in 10 American Jews are more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians. (That compares to about six in 10 of all Americans.) Additionally, 95 percent of Jews have favorable views of Israel, while 10 percent have favorable views of the Palestinian Authority—significantly more pro-Israel than the overall national averages of 71 percent favorable views of Israel and 21 percent favorable views of the Palestinian Authority.”
It is not surprising that the left-wing Jewish organization J Street, with its own agenda in mind, repeatedly tries to release polls that paint a different view of the Jewish vote, contradicting the extensive polling of Gallup and the actual voting history of the Jewish community, which shows the accuracy of Newport’s analysis.
The most recent example can be seen in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial race, in which now-Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, made Israel an important issue in his campaign against Democrat Andrew Gillum. DeSantis was the leading member of Congress involved in moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and, during the race proclaimed that if elected, he would be the most pro-Israel governor in the United States.
Gillum also asserted that he was pro-Israel, and had visited Israel three times, yet he did not support the embassy move. A Fox News exit poll found that Gillum had won the Jewish vote in Florida by a 65-35 percent margin. It is noteworthy that this same poll found that Senator Rick Scott won only 27 percent of the Jewish vote against Senator Nelson in Florida, and a good case can be made for attributing this to Scott’s not having made Israel the same major issue in his campaign as DeSantis had done.
In 2016, Trump received around 24 percent of Florida’s Jewish vote. And DeSantis’s 35 percent of the Jewish vote represented around a 50 percent increase in support for a Republican candidate by Jewish voters in Florida.
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