Voters go to the polls to cast their votes on the last day of early voting for the 2024 elections in Atlanta on November 1, 2024. Photo by Getty Images

With Arno Rosenfeld
November 5, 2024

Early exit poll results showed 77 percent of Jewish voters on Tuesday backed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, while 22 percent said they voted for former Republican President Donald Trump. The survey, conducted by a consortium of national media organizations, is still adding new responses and results are subject to change.

If the current divide continues, it would represent another election cycle in which Republicans claim that Jews will flock to their candidates because of Israel or that they won’t get results because of antisemitism.

Early results did not break down reactions by religion in Pennsylvania or Michigan, two of the swing states where both campaigns attracted strong interest from Jewish voters and some told pollsters and reporters they were considering switching parties to vote for Trump.

The national poll also asked voters about U.S. support for Israel, and voters were split almost evenly into three groups: 32% said support was too strong, 30% said it wasn’t strong enough, and 31% said they were right. But there were sharp differences among partisans on this question. While 68 percent of those who thought the US supported Israel too much said they voted for Harris, 81 percent of those who thought the support was insufficient said they supported Trump.

The question about Israel comes after more than a year of war in the Middle East has weakened support for Israel around the world, including among leftists in the United States. What some analysts predict will alienate some Jewish Democrats from Harris this year. conservative groups it was very difficult The Republican Jewish Coalition aims to attract more Jews to Trump by spending more than $15 million on television ads supporting the former president.

Trump and his supporters have argued that he is a supporter of Israel and will take a tougher stance against pro-Palestinian protests, which many Jews view as antisemitic. By contrast, Harris and her Democratic surrogates — including her Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff — pointed to Trump’s association with antisemitic figures and offensive comments, including his suggestion that Jews who do not support him are “disloyal” and should be blamed if he loses.

In a separate exit poll question about what issues most motivate presidential elections, 4% of voters overall named foreign policy; This policy ranks fifth after the state of democracy (34%), the state of the economy (31%), and abortion. (14%) and immigration (11%). Of those who chose foreign policy, 54 percent said they voted for Trump and 39 percent said they voted for Harris.

Experts use exit polls to analyze elections by demographic groups and understand how different voters make their choices. But horse racing questions aren’t always accurate because some participants aren’t telling the truth about who they chose.

If Harris actually wins 77 percent of the Jewish vote, her support would approach the previous high of 80 percent who supported Bill Clinton in 1992.

Between 1996 and 2008, Democratic candidates for the White House received 74% to 79% of the Jewish vote. In 2012, when President Barack Obama was up for re-election, he lost ground among Jews, with 30 percent supporting his Republican rival, Mitt Romney.

In 2016, 71% of Jewish voters supported Hillary Clinton over Trump; In 2020, the national exit poll failed to collect enough responses from Jews to report vote distributions. alternative measure In the report created by Brandeis University using a different methodology, this rate was estimated as 70% for Joe Biden and 30% for Trump.

Exit polls often miss the roughly 25% of American Jews who identify as both agnostic and atheist, a Jewish group that also tends to be more politically liberal, meaning they may undercount support for Democrats.