A much-quoted Edison Analysis exit ballot rattled expectations on Election Day when it claimed Kamala Harris had bagged 79% of the Jewish vote — disproving the notion that the left’s embrace of pro-Hamas protests would drive important, perhaps even historic, Jewish defections from the Democratic Social gathering.
It was a shocking bit of knowledge. Besides it wasn’t true.
The ballot was primarily based on ten states — none of them New York, California or Massachusetts, the place about half of America’s Jews really reside.
In different phrases, attempting to be taught something about American Jewish voting patterns by wanting on the Edison ballot was like trying to review the preferences of McDonald’s prospects by interviewing individuals who solely eat salad for lunch — it gained’t let you know a lot you should utilize.
And but, we’ve now had days of the media — and a few Jewish communal leaders — responding to Trump’s rout by assuring everybody that it doesn’t matter what, at the very least the Jews can nonetheless be relied on to vote Democrat.
One mindlessly progressive Jewish rag instantly printed a bit celebrating this assertion as a sign that Jews are simply too ethical to fall for the manipulation of Orange Hitler.
However as actual numbers began coming in, the storyline about Jews standing with the candidate who so crassly tried to market herself as Kamamala — a play on the Yiddish phrase for mom — shortly fell aside.
In New York, The Submit reported, roughly 45% of Jewish voters voted GOP, delivering a mind-boggling 50% enhance in Jewish help for Trump over 2020.
Rockland County, residence to the best focus of Jews of any county within the nation, supplied an much more dramatic story: In 2020, Biden gained the county by 2 proportion factors; on Tuesday, it was Trump by 12.
The identical was true in New Jersey’s Passaic County, which one other very sizable Jewish group helped flip from blue to purple.
You possibly can argue these numbers don’t inform the entire story. Most of the Jews within the aforementioned counties are Orthodox, and extra observant Jews naturally are typically extra conservative.
However that also doesn’t change the fundamental premise of what laborious knowledge now clearly exhibits: The Jewish vote is now evenly cut up between each events.
The occasions, as a smart Jewish voter as soon as put it, they’re a-changin’.
And hallelujah. First, as a result of a Jewish vote evenly distributed between Republicans and Democrats is definitely a great factor.
The much less Jews — or, for that matter, members of another ethnic minority group — come to rely upon and establish completely with one occasion and its establishments, the stronger American democracy grows.
However there’s an excellent larger purpose to rejoice the historic reddening of the Jewish vote: As Newsweek editor Batya Ungar-Sargon famous in a now-viral video endorsement of Trump, the Jewish vote has at all times been tethered to that of the working class.
Given the American Jewish group’s roots as hard-scrabbling immigrants and its conventional adherence to concepts of social justice, it’s lengthy been the case that as go the Jews, so go blue-collar People.
And this week, we’ve seen each teams make beelines to the GOP.
That ought to give Democrats all the explanations they should buckle down and dramatically rethink their occasion, their commitments and their candidates.
When your two most reliable bases decamp to the opposite facet, you’ll be able to now not blame your defeat on racism, or misogyny, or any of the opposite boutique gripes with which America’s self-elected elites are comforting themselves as of late.
After all, the Democratic machine might stare on the abyss and resolve that the abyss itself is guilty for its fall, and no additional classes want be realized.
Right here’s hoping that’s not the case.
The Jewish vote of no-confidence — name it an exodus — ought to be all the inducement the Democratic Social gathering wants to interact within the time-honored Jewish observe of heshbon nefesh, actually an “accounting of the soul.”
If this occurs, it’ll lead to America as soon as once more having two actual events with actual differing concepts and actual insurance policies that deal with the issues of actual individuals dwelling in the true world.
And the Jews, who gave this nation’s founders the ethical language they sought to champion liberty and justice for all, could have as soon as once more executed their half to maintain America nice.
Liel Leibovitz is editor at giant for Pill and senior fellow on the Hudson Institute.
