The first rule of exit polls is to be careful when interpreting early exit polls, which is not always true.

The second rule is that they represent, at least for now, the best information we have on the question that preoccupies Jews of all political persuasions: How many Jews voted for Donald Trump? So how many people voted for Kamala Harris?

In recent years, 20% to 30% of American Jews have supported Republicans in national elections. The GOP reached a high point in 1980, when Ronald Reagan won nearly 40% of the Jewish vote, but the more typical divide makes Jews one of the most reliably Democratic demographic groups in the United States.

But this year, as some Jews feel alienated from the left and others from the right because of Israel, some have predicted that Trump could have an unusually strong showing among Jewish voters.

Early polls suggest this is not the case, at least overall. National Election Pool, which produces exit polls for a consortium of major news organizations. It was revealed that 79 percent of Jews said they voted for DemocratsThe rate of those who voted for Republicans was 21%.

A second major analysis by a nonpartisan polling firm for Fox News, using Associated Press data, found lower but still significant support for Harris. He concluded that 66 percent of Jews voted for him.

Edison Research, which conducts the national pool poll, surveyed voters in 10 states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin. It did not poll voters in New York or California, which are home to the largest Jewish populations and also vote reliably Democratic by wide margins.

It did not immediately release details about how many voters were surveyed and cautioned that the results could change as the polling continues and results are adjusted to reflect actual vote counts, a process called weighting, which is a standard component of poll methodology.

If true, the result of the National Election Pool would be the lowest share of Jewish votes cast for a Republican presidential candidate in the last 24 years.

But it’s a big question: Exit polls are known to be unreliable. famous examples Polls do not reflect the real results of the elections.

Some have tweaked the methodology as the proportion of voters voting in person on Election Day has declined over time. And like all polls, they can reflect the partisan bias of pollsters.

Fox News, which leans right but has a reputation for producing reliable polling, conducted its own Election Day “voter analysis” and said it solved some of the problems with traditional exit polls. found this 66 percent of Jews voted for Harris, while 31 percent voted for Trump. The survey revealed that Jews were more likely to vote for Harris than members of other religions.

The Fox News analysis, conducted by NORC, a nonpartisan firm, using data collected by the Associated Press, covered more states and broke down the results by state, allowing a state-by-state analysis of the Jewish vote. It found that 55% of Jews in New York and 56% of Jews in Florida voted for Harris; this probably reflected the influence of the significant Orthodox population in the provinces.

By contrast, the poll found that 76% of Jews in California voted for Harris. The number of Jews in most states was too small to allow state-level reporting.

Both the Fox News poll and the National Election Pool asked voters about their views on Israel. A Fox News poll found that 56 percent of Trump voters strongly or somewhat support “continued aid to Israel in the war against Hamas and Hezbollah,” while 58 percent of Harris voters strongly or somewhat oppose it .

The National Election Pool survey asked voters whether U.S. support for Israel was too strong, not strong enough, or just right. Voters were evenly distributed across categories; 68 percent of those who said the US support for Israel was too strong were Democrats, and 81 percent of those who said it was not strong enough were Republicans.

A September poll by pollsters affiliated with Democrats, before the election It turns out that 68% of American Jewish voters say they plan to vote for Harris. A similar recent Poll finds 71% of Jews in seven competitive states He said they would vote for him.

A different pre-election poll. commissioned by the conservative Manhattan InstituteIt found Harris on track to have the smallest margin of victory among Jews by any Democrat over a Republican in more than 40 years. The National Election Pool’s margin for Jewish voters is wider than it was in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was found to have outperformed Trump by 47 percentage points.

This was the last time the National Electoral Pool reported the Jewish vote. Too few Jews were sampled to report Jewish votes in 2020, Leaving conclusions about how Jews vote to partisan pollsters. A poll commissioned by Republicans said the Jewish vote was shifting to Republicans, while a poll commissioned by Democrats said Jewish votes were shifting to Democrats.

This story has been updated since publication to reflect new information about the surveys and their results.