Despite JStreet Spin, Trump Made Gains With Jewish Voters

The advocacy group J Street has voiced its support for legislation being pushed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (D) to oppose giving arms to Israel, which is in the middle of a multi-front war. J Street, however, still bizarrely advertises itself as a pro-Israel organization.

The fundamental litmus test of a pro-Israel organization is its support for providing military aid to Israel, and J Street has failed this test. J Street supports legislation from one of the most anti-Israel members of the Senate and yet opposes the pro-Israel picks of President-elect Donald Trump, including Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), former Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), for the incoming administration.   

To maintain its relevance as representing the Jewish community, J Street and even the Democratic Majority for Israel promulgate inaccurate polls to try and claim that Jews voted overwhelmingly for Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris over Trump. They further allege that the primary concern for Jewish voters was abortion, whereas objective polls have concluded that support for Israel was a primary concern of Jewish voters. To its credit, DMFI supported and endorsed Democratic primary opponents against some of the most vociferous, anti-Israel Democratic members of Congress. Further, it strongly opposes Sanders’s end arms to Israel resolution.

In polls conducted in 2020 by the Jewish Electorate Institute for organizations like J Street, results indicated that American Jews don’t care about Israel and would always vote overwhelmingly Democrat. The Jewish Electorate Institute claimed before the 2020 election that Trump would receive a percentage of the Jewish vote in Florida similar to that which he had received in 2016. However, an Associated Press exit poll on Election Day 2020 showed that Trump won 41% of the Jewish vote in Florida, as compared with just 24% in 2016. Unsurprisingly, the Jewish Electorate Institute didn’t acknowledge its extraordinary polling error or adjust its methodology. The organization claims that Trump received just 26% of the Jewish vote in this month’s election when other polls and actual vote totals in Jewish areas show that Trump likely received more than 40% of the Jewish vote.

Rep. Richie Torres (D-N.Y.) ripped into the J Street claims as he cited a New York poll showing more than 40% of New York’s Jews voting for Trump. Teach Coalition polled Jewish voters in Pennsylvania, and more than 40% of those surveyed favored Trump. More important than arguing over competing surveys are actual vote totals that show a massive shift of Jewish support for him.

Though J Street surveys claim that 70% of Orthodox Jews supported Trump, numbers show support for him was higher. The epicenter of Modern Orthodoxy in America is in Teaneck, N.J., where Trump received 71% of the vote. In Lakewood, N.J.—the epicenter of the haredi Jewish community in America—Trump got more than 90% of the Jewish vote, with high tallies in other haredi and Chassidic areas as well.

The increased Jewish vote was also found in heavily Jewish pockets of other blue states, such as the Pico-Robertson neighborhood of Los Angeles, which went heavily for Trump, as did Jewish areas in swing states like Pennsylvania, and the heavily Jewish areas of Miami and Palm Beach County in Florida.

J Street would like to claim that the Jewish vote has stayed the same, regardless of the actual votes that took place in the recent election. It would like people and politicians to think that they can turn their back on Israel, and it won’t matter to the Jewish community. But if that is the case, then why was one of the Democrats’ main appeals to Jewish voters a television commercial pitching Harris as a strong friend of Israel?

If the Democrats do not change their current direction, then support Trump and the Republicans got from the Jewish vote in 2024 will likely increase in the future. 

Farley Weiss leads the Israel Heritage Foundation and writes for Jewish News Syndicate.