President-elect Donald Trump won more than 40% of the Jewish vote in several states, breaking through a seemingly insurmountable barrier on the strength of his support for Israel and his proven commitment to fighting antisemitism.
National exit polls suggested that Trump, like other Republicans, had only won a small share of the Jewish vote. The CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC poll suggested that Trump won only 21% of the Jewish vote; Fox News suggested he won 31%.
But even 31% would have been the highest percentage of the Jewish vote for any Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan won 39% in 1980. Dwight D. Eisenhower holds the current record of 40% in the 1965 election.
Update: The Republican Jewish Coalition estimated that Trump won 32% of the Jewish vote nationwide.
Moreover, in several states, Trump broke through 40%, long seen as the ceiling for Jewish votes for a Republican. The Fox News poll found that Trump won relatively high percentages of the Jewish vote in the following states:
- Arizona – 38%
- Florida – 44%
- New Jersey – 34%
- Nevada – 42%
- New York – 46%
There were too few Jewish respondents in the samples to record percentages in many other states in the Fox poll.
The results did not quite confirm a poll during the campaign that showed Trump with 50% of the Jewish vote in New York State, but they did suggest that Trump came close to that number.
The New York Post reported that Trump increased his share of the Jewish vote in that state by 50% over 2020.
The Jewish vote is notoriously difficult to estimate because of small sample sizes, but polls before the election suggested that Trump would win overwhelming majorities of Jews who said Israel and antisemitism were top issues. That, however, is a minority of American Jews.
While Trump was never expected to win a majority of Jews, it was expected that movements in the Jewish vote in several key states — notably Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada — could swing those states to Trump.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.