Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Jews and the Enthusiasm Gap

The buzzword is enthusiasm this midterm election season. In the Wall Street Journal in early August, Robert Reich wrote about “The Obama Agenda and the Enthusiasm Gap.” By month’s end, the New York Times editorialized about “The Wrong Kind of Enthusiasm.” Across the political spectrum – and borne out in primary turnout numbers this summer – conservatives are viewed as far more excited than liberals about their candidates for U.S. House and Senate, governorships and statehouses.

Are Jews – whether due to Obama fatigue or Tea Party hype – falling into this enthusiasm gap? And will that translate into a noticeable shift in the relative rates of participation between conservative and liberal Jews?

“You’re not going to have that problem with Jews. We vote,” says Linda Berg, political director of the National Jewish Democratic Council. “Jewish voters vote more than anybody else. We show up in special elections and primaries and dog catcher elections – we’re there.”

Not only that, but they’re reliably Democratic – which is why Berg sees another kind of energy this fall. Groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition and the new Emergency Committee for Israel are “really spending a lot of money trying to move this group that votes into the Republican column,” Berg said.

“There is a real attempt to whip up enthusiasm, with false claims saying Democrats and the president are detrimental to Israel,” she said.

The Republican Jewish Coalition didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Whether due to those attempts or otherwise, recent studies show Jews’ Democratic loyalty on the wane. An analysis released last month by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that Jews moved from left to right between President Obama’s election and the summer of 2010 more than any other religious group studied, and more than registered voters as a whole.

According to the Pew study, between ’08 and ’10, voters overall shed their identification with the Democratic Party by four percentage points and shifted toward the Republicans by the same amount. Jews, on the other hand, had the greatest Democratic loss, by 12 percentage points, and Republican gain, by 13 percentage points. In 2010, that leaves Jewish voters at 60% Democratic and 33% Republican. (By comparison, white mainline Protestants went from 45% to 41% Democratic-identified between ’08 and ’10, and shifted to the Republican side by 45% to 49% during that time.)

Another Pew study documents that “Republicans also continue to enjoy an engagement advantage over the Democrats, which at least in part reflects the greater disposition to vote among these voting blocs that have swung their way.” That’s social science-ese for enthusiasm.

As the oft-ignored primaries of September pass by, ask your Jewish friends if they’re voting. In August primaries in the Midwest, Republicans were two and three times more likely to vote than Democrats.

Who’s psyched for November 2?

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Explore

Most Popular

In Case You Missed It

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.