President-elect Donald Trump, with vice president-elect Sen. JD Vance and both their families, during an election night celebration in Florida. Photo by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

By Rob Eshman November 6, 2024

In a historic election that saw former President Donald Trump rack up gains with almost every demographic — Black and Hispanic men, white non-college-educated women, and Asian Americans, among others — why did American Jews remain obstinately loyal to the Democratic candidate?

A preliminary exit poll showed Jews backed Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump by 79% to 21%. Two other polls, by J Street/GBAO Strategies and Fox News, had Jewish support for Harris at 71% and 66%, respectively. More complete polls may shift these numbers, but it’s worth noting they effectively track with the results of a poll, conducted shortly before the election, that showed that 71% of swing state Jewish voters backed Harris.

One explanation as to why: It’s not because Jews are so liberal — it’s because we’re so conservative.

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That idea runs counter to the standard explanation for Jewish voting patterns, which is that American Jews are stuck in a leftie fantasyland — in which our presidential candidates are still all Franklin Delano Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy — and refuse to recognize the slow discombobulation of the Democratic Party.

“There is almost nothing Democrats can do to damage America, or Israel, that would change most American Jews’ political leanings,” the conservative pundit Dennis Prager wrote in 2022.

But recent Jewish voting history shows that perception is simply false. In liberal Los Angeles, Republican Richard Riordan got 50% of the Jewish vote when he ran for mayor in 1993. And Arnold Schwarzengger captured 48% of the Jewish vote when he ran for California governor in 2006. In presidential politics, Ronald Reagan won 40% of the Jewish vote in 1980. The right candidate can move Jews right.

It’s not Republicans that American Jews are allergic to. It’s insecurity and extremism.

Exit polls showed that the two top concerns for most Americans going into the voting booth were democracy and the economy, and American Jews said the same. According to the exit poll done by Edison Research, 34% of Jewish voters said the state of democracy was their chief concern, followed by the state of the economy (31%), abortion (14%) and immigration (11%).

Why democracy? Jews make up 2.4% of Americans. Without voting rights, freedom of religion, free speech, the rule of law — all the safeguards democracy affords a minority — life for American Jews would be as tenuous here as it’s been for Jews throughout the world, throughout history.

And Jewish voters simply did not buy the Republican message that Harris posed a greater danger to democracy than Trump. They were not willing to risk the status quo on someone like Trump, who holds so little regard for the institutions and traditions that have long kept their community safe. That’s the very definition of being conservative.

It’s not that Jews are blind to the excesses of the Democratic Party or the American left. Many of the same voters who turned out for Harris have stood up to the Oct. 7 deniers, the knee-jerk Israel haters, and the antisemitic conspiracy theorists who have infected the left. The Anti-Defamation League has spoken out both against campus protesters who disrupt and intimidate Jewish students and against Trump.

But elections are binary choices, and American Jews, with democracy foremost on their minds, refused to reward someone who fomented an attack on Congress, rejected the results of a fair election, and trafficked in divisive, often antisemitic rhetoric.

“President Trump’s embrace of anti-democratic, antisemitic, xenophobic, and racist conspiracy theories and tropes seeks to pit communities against one another,” Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, wrote after the election. “The Jewish community knows precisely where such hate, extremism, and dehumanization leads — and we will be on the front lines of the fights ahead because our values and our safety depend on it.”

Americans chose someone who offers a radical break from democratic norms. They rejected the pleas of a bipartisan coalition of establishment Republicans and Democrats who warned against Trump.

But Jews paid attention.

In a speech last September, Trump said that if he lost, Jews would have a lot to do with it. All I can say is, we tried. Now, as one of the last bricks in the blue wall, American Jews can only hope we won’t need to say “we told you so.”

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