Understanding the Jewish Vote - 200 Years of Jewish American Voting History

understanding the jewish vote

200 Years of Jewish American Voting History

“…a community that has been actively engaged in the political process, and in many instances has played a decisive role in the outcome of major elections... ”

American Jews play an important role in the U.S. political process, as donors, as campaign staff and volunteers, as candidates, and, most of all, as voters. Historically, the impact of the Jewish vote has been magnified by the fact that most Jews live in states that potentially are significant in presidential elections, and the fact that the rate of Jewish voter participation is considerably higher than that of the general public. Since 1920, the percentage of the voting-age population that has taken part in presidential elections has ranged from 49% to 66%, whereas among Jews the rate is about 85%. In local and statewide elections, Jewish participation is considerably lower than it is in presidential races, although there too it is higher than that of the general public. All of which makes the Jewish vote a force to be reckoned with in American politics—and one that has the potential to have even greater impact.1

Early Restrictions

During the early decades of American independence, legislation in a number of states had the effect of impeding Jewish participation in the political process. While the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibited limits on the “free exercise” of religion, many state constitutions restricted voting and office-holding to Christians or required voters and candidates to take an oath affirming Christian religious principles. Such restrictions were dropped only gradually. Connecticut’s new constitution, adopted in 1818, removed Colonial Era regulations that prevented Jews from voting, but it took twenty-five more years for Connecticut’s Jews to secure the right to organize religious congregations. A decades-long legislative battle in Maryland eventually resulted, in 1826, in the abolition of Christian requirements for political activity. By 1840, twenty-one of the twenty-six states had revised their regulations in ways that made it possible for Jews to enjoy political equality. The last two holdouts were North Carolina, which dropped Christians-only language when it adopted a new state constitution in 1868, and New Hampshire, which removed its Christian restrictions in 1877.2

1868: Memories of Grant’s Edict

Until the late 1800s, Jews were not sufficiently numerous to have a noticeable impact on either presidential or congressional elections. That changed dramatically as a result of the waves of Jewish immigration from Germany and other central European countries in the mid-1800s. Data derived from the census of 1820 indicated there were about 2,700 Jews in the United States. By 1860, the community numbered 150,000, two-thirds of them recent immigrants. By 1877, the total had surpassed 200,000.

The presidential election campaign of 1868 was the first instance in which there was a substantial public discussion about the potential impact of Jewish voters.3

Critics of the Republican candidate, General Ulysses S. Grant, drew attention to Grant’s infamous Civil War edict ordering the mass expulsion of Jews from the Kentucky-Tennessee region. Although that 1862 order was quickly overturned by President Abraham Lincoln, the memory of Grant’s action was still fresh among Jewish voters. The issue was raised by newspapers in areas with sizable Jewish readership, such as St. Louis, Savannah and Memphis, as well as in the home state of the Democratic presidential nominee, New York Governor Horatio Seymour. The critics sought not only to turn Jewish voters against Grant but to challenge his suitability for the presidency in the mind of the general public.

Jews staged anti-Grant protest meetings in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Nashville, St. Louis, and Memphis. One speaker at the latter declared that “the only position Grant deserved to be elevated to was the one occupied by Haman in the last moments of his career,” that is, a gallows. Other Jewish critics compared Grant to Pharaoh and Amalek.

Such public rallies reflected a growing self-confidence in the American Jewish community. Jewish participation in America’s political policymaking process goes back to the earliest days of the colonial era, when a Jewish petition to the Dutch owners of New Amsterdam (later New York) compelled Governor Peter Stuyvesant to reverse his order expelling Jewish settlers from the territory in 1654. In the years to follow, Jews continued to mobilize on select issues of concern, from successful

the election of Seymour and Blair and the defeat of Grant and Colfax.” Both the Washington Intelligencer and the St. Louis Times predicted that “the Hebrew vote of the United States” would “effect the overthrow of the dominant [Republican] party.”

Sensitive to this electoral reality but concerned about giving the impression that he was catering to Jewish voters, Grant said nothing in public about his wartime decree. However, he authorized two Jewish interlocutors to publicly summarize private conversations with him in which he repudiated antisemitism and said he had signed Order No. 11 “without reflection.” One of the accounts, by B’nai B’rith leader and self-identified Democrat Adolph Moses, appeared on the front page of the New York Times. 5

3 protests against Sunday closure laws in several Southern cities in the 1840s, to rallies in northern California against a state legislator’s proposal for an anti-Jewish tax in 1855. As the Jewish community grew in size and stature, Jews felt more accepted in American society and therefore were even more comfortable taking an active role in the political process. In addition, the mid-century wave of German Jewish immigration to the U.S. included activists who had been involved in Germany’s failed 1848 revolution; their arrival likely contributed to the growing political activism among American Jews.

The power of the Jewish vote in 1868 was somewhat diminished by the fact that some Jews were not yet eligible to vote, because they were very recent immigrants. In addition, women had not yet won the right to vote. Still, Jewish voters constituted a potentially significant body of tens of thousands of votes, which in a close election could have made a difference. A New York Times news report on the distribution of literature aimed at “alienating the Jewish voters from Gen. Grant” noted that “there are in Illinois not less than 30,000 Jewish voters, and in Indiana at least 16,000; and inasmuch as five-sixths of them have hitherto always voted with the Republicans, a wholesale defection on their part would endanger the election of Grant and [his running mate Schuyler] Colfax in Illinois, and render the election of the Democratic ticket in Indiana certainly beyond a doubt.”4

The Times was not alone in this perception. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that “the Israelites in the States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and Indiana have it entirely in their own power to secure

Grant’s Jewish supporters, such as the prominent Jewish banker Joseph Seligman and his brothers, hailed the news as proof of Grant’s remorse.6

Did Jewish anger at Grant over Order No.11 affect the race of 1868? No scientific studies shed light on how Jews ultimately voted, but even if they had all turned against Grant, it would not have altered the outcome. Of the five states where there were enough Jewish votes to have made a difference, Grant won four, which is to say that Jewish voters could not have defeated him; in the fifth, New York, Seymour’s margin of victory was sufficiently slim—9,995—that the Jewish vote might have made a difference, but his triumph there could not have made up for Grant’s victories elsewhere.7

In 1868, as in later years, the combination of perception and possibility was what made the Jewish vote significant. Since it is never possible to be certain in advance about the outcome of an election, the perception of a close race increases the power of Jewish voters. The number of eligible Jewish voters in 1868 sufficed to create the mathematical possibility that they could tip the balance in a close state, and thereby have a decisive

President Ulysses S. Grant

President Abraham Lincoln overruled Grant’s order.

impact on the overall result. That prospect was what secured the significant political achievement of Grant’s de facto repudiation of his anti-Jewish edict (which was strengthened by Grant’s post-election decision to make public his letter to a Jewish colleague explicitly distancing himself from Order No.11). Moreover, regardless of the actual outcome in 1868, a new dynamic was beginning to take form in American political culture: so long as a sufficient number of Jewish voters reside in states with significant numbers of electoral votes, the possibility exists, every four years, that the Jewish vote will play a decisive role in choosing the president, a prospect with which candidates must reckon. The same is true for specific congressional elections in many regions.

1892–1920:

Leaving Socialism

American Jewry underwent another demographic transformation in the late 1800s. From 1881 to 1891, 135,000 Jews fleeing Russian pogroms and discrimination arrived in the United States. Intensified persecution in the years to follow provoked a much greater exodus: 1.3-million Jews from Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe reached America between 1891 and 1914. The largest portion settled in New York City.

Jewish socialists formed a lively and colorful segment of the Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. By virtue of their high profile, including numerous publications and constant activity, they attracted significant attention from journalists and, later, historians. Precisely how numerous they were in the Jewish community is unclear. There seems to have been a hard core of ideologues, as well as a much larger number of Jews who were sympathetic to some aspects of the socialist agenda. The latter likely were motivated less by ideology than the fact that as blue-color workers and union members, their socioeconomic interests aligned closely with the agendas of socialist parties.

That coincidence of interests did not always translate into votes, even when the socialist candidates were Jewish. Socialist leader Daniel DeLeon, a Sefardi Jew, ran for governor of New York in 1891, 1902, and 1904, and never received more than 1.2% of the vote. Another important Jewish socialist leader, Morris Hilquit, ran for Congress in Manhattan’s 9th District in 1906 and 1908. The 9th was located on the Lower East Side, the most heavily-Jewish neighborhood in the city. Yet Hilquit won only 26% of the vote in his first race, and 21% in his second.8 Another Jewish socialist candidate, Meyer London, fared better in that district, capturing 33% of the vote in 1910, 31% in 1912, and then winning handily in 1914. Two factors explain the difference between the two men. Hilquit was an assimilated Jew who embraced his party’s opposition to immigration and was generally seen as insensitive to Jewish concerns. London was a Yiddish-speaking ‘man of the people’, who was sensitive to parochial concerns, including the hot button issue of immigration. A second factor was that the naturalization process for new citizens took five years. That kept a significant number of Jewish immigrants temporarily out of the electoral process.

The presidential election of 1916 was the first race for which there are at least partial statistical analyses of Jewish voting patterns. By that time, several important features of the Jewish vote were established. First, the growing Jewish immigrant population was gradually increasing its number of eligible voters and therefore its political clout. Second, there was a notable tendency

Meyer London

5 among Jewish voters to consider ethnic or communal concerns a major, and sometimes decisive, factor in supporting or rejecting a candidate. Third, while the majority of Jewish voters were residents of New York City, making them a force in city and state politics, sizable Jewish immigrant communities in Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago positioned them to have political impact as well.

The campaign of 1916 pitted incumbent Democrat president Woodrow Wilson versus Republican challenger Charles Evans Hughes, an associate justice of the Supreme Court and former governor of New York. Jewish voters had ample reason to support Wilson, and little to back Hughes. Wilson had vetoed legislation to restrict immigration, supported labor rights laws such as the eight hour workday, and nominated Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court. Since there was no national polling to tabulate the overall Jewish vote, the estimates are derived from the results in some heavily-Jewish voting districts in New York City, Chicago, and Boston. It would appear that Wilson won about 50% of Jewish votes and Hughes 38%, with 11% supporting the Socialist Party candidate, Alan Benson.9

The 1916 race was so close that it is conceivable the Jewish vote made a real difference. Wilson won 277 electoral votes—only eleven more than the 266 needed for victory—to 254 for Hughes. In California, which had 13 electoral votes, Wilson’s margin of victory was 3,773 votes. If just 1,887 Jewish voters there had gone for Hughes instead of Wilson, the GOP nominee would have been elected president.

The 1920 presidential race saw a major, although temporary, shift by Jewish voters to the Republicans. It appears that the Republican candidate, U.S. Senator Warren Harding of Ohio, won 67% of the Jewish vote; the Democratic nominee, Ohio Governor James Cox, received 17%; and the remaining 16% went to the Socialist, Eugene Debs, who ran from prison (he was serving time for advocating draft refusal). The reasons for Jewish support for Harding are not entirely clear. On immigration, the Republican platform was considerably more restrictionist than that of the Democrats.10 Harding’s major campaign theme was to position himself against the outgoing Wilson administration, arguing that electing Cox would be the equivalent of a third term for Wilson. Since half or more U.S. Jews had supported Wilson, that should have pushed them toward Cox. Harding did receive one of the first celebrity endorsements, from the prominent Jewish entertainer Al Jolson, who wrote a song called “Harding, You’re the Man for Us,” and served as a campaign spokesman; and the GOP nominee did make a statement shortly before the election calling pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe “emotional insanity.”11 Yet those would hardly seem to be compelling reasons for a large majority of Jewish voters to support a restrictionist candidate.

The Impact of Antisemitism

In the aftermath of World War I and well into the 1920s, an intense mood of anti-foreigner and anticommunist sentiment, including a significant element of antisemitism, swept America. The Soviet revolution in Russia provoked widespread fear of Communism, and the fact that a small number of Jews were prominently associated with the Russian revolution helped perpetuate stereotypes about Jewish immigrants importing radical ideologies to the United States. During 1919-1920, thousands of leftwing radicals were arrested and 556 were deported. Five Socialist state legislators were expelled from the New York State Assembly. Many states banned the public display of Communist or socialist flags. Severe restrictions on immigration were adopted by Congress in 1921, and made even stricter in 1924. The Ku Klux Klan reached its zenith of popularity and political influence during this period, to the extent that its supporters blocked anti-Klan resolutions that

President Woodrow Wilson

were proposed at both the Republican and Democratic Party conventions in 1924. Although KKK violence primarily targeted African-Americans, its propaganda stirred hatred of Jews as well.

The bigotry of the 1920s impacted Jewish political behavior in one important way. American Jews were anxious to integrate into American society and many responded to the country’s anti-radical mood by moving away from doctrinaire socialism. Their voting patterns reflected that shift. By contemporary standards, the 16% that Debs, the Socialist presidential candidate, received from Jewish voters in 1920, like the 11% who supported the Socialist nominee Benson, four years earlier, seems sizable. However, that number still represented only a very small minority of American Jewry, and the vote for Debs was the highest level of support any Socialist candidate for president would ever receive from U.S. Jews.

1924–1928: Shift to the Democrats

The presidential race of 1924 saw Republican incumbent president Calvin Coolidge challenged by a Democrat, former ambassador John W. Davis, and a Progressive Party nominee, U.S. Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Sr. With restrictive immigration quotas already a matter of law and the future of Palestine not yet a matter of dispute, there were no pressing policy issues of specifically Jewish concern.

Jewish supporters of President Coolidge could point to the fact that he had made public statements in support of Zionism, and signed into law the 1924 Anglo-American Convention on Palestine, which established America’s interest in the development of a Jewish national homeland there. Coolidge also had undertaken several gestures that were warmly greeted in the Jewish community, such as receiving Palestine Chief Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook at the White House, and attending the cornerstone laying of the Washington, D.C. Jewish community center.12 Davis, by contrast, had no particular record on Jewish affairs. LaFollette, campaigning as the liberal alternative to the two major candidates, offered socialist-leaning Jews a way to vote for someone who was endorsed by the Socialist Party but was not burdened by that party’s official label or radical reputation. An estimated 44% of Jewish voters supported Coolidge, 34% voted for Davis, and 22% for LaFollette. In any event, Coolidge won in a landslide, so the Jewish vote, like the voting patterns of other small ethnic minorities, had no impact on the outcome.

The Democratic Party underwent a major change in the 1920s. As large numbers of urban ethnic immigrants completed the naturalization process and gained the right to vote in the post-World War I years, the Democrats became their political home, by fielding ethnic candidates, doling out patronage jobs to their fellow countrymen, and championing the issues that concerned them most, such as labor rights.13 The Democrats’ nomination in 1928 of New York Governor Alfred E. Smith, the first Catholic ever chosen as a presidential candidate by one of the major parties, marked the culmination of the transformation of the Democratic Party into a big tent, one in which most American Jews felt completely comfortable.

Yiddish-language

The 1928 Republican nominee, Herbert Hoover, had some high-profile Jewish supporters, such his advisers Bernard Baruch and Lewis Strauss, with whom he had worked as chairman of humanitarian relief efforts in Europe in World War I. During the campaign, Hoover’s Jewish allies pointed to the fact that major European Jewish communities benefited directly from Hoover’s relief work. A pamphlet about those efforts, printed in Yiddish and English, hailed Hoover as “the modern Moses of war-stricken Europe” who “led Israel out of the slavery of starvation and despair.” The Smith camp, however, arguably had a stronger case for Jewish support. In his years as a New York State assemblyman (and Lower East Side resident), Smith championed policies that directly impacted the lives of Jewish immigrants, including improving factory conditions and abolishing regulations that impeded Sabbath observance.

More broadly, the fact that Smith was a member of a religious minority undoubtedly encouraged Jewish voters to believe that as president, he would be especially sensitive to the concerns of other minorities.14

Smith received approximately 63% of Jewish votes, while Republican nominee Herbert Hoover won about 33%, but Hoover’s landslide victory rendered the Jewish vote irrelevant.15 The Socialist Party’s candidate, Norman Thomas, received the remaining 4%. The outcome illustrated two important trends in Jewish voting that would continue long after 1928: the

Americanization of Jewish immigrants was steadily distancing them from socialism, and the Democratic Party was becoming the new political home for most American Jews.

1932–1940:

The First Three Roosevelt Elections

The onset of the Great Depression shaped the 1932 presidential election. President Hoover was widely blamed for not pulling the country out of its economic morass, and American Jews, like most Americans, overwhelmingly backed the Democratic nominee, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. The fact that most American Jews were already moving into the Democratic column made a vote for FDR all the more comfortable for them. Roosevelt won about 69% of Jewish votes, while Hoover won 24%, continuing the trend manifest four years earlier. The shock and hardships of the Depression increased Socialist Norman Thomas’s share of the Jewish vote, from 4% in 1928 to 7% in 1932, but it still remained a very small segment of the Jewish electorate. It was yet another lopsided election outcome, so the Jewish vote had no impact on the race itself; but Roosevelt’s awareness of his high level of Jewish support, and concern about the impact if he lost it in the future, seems to have been the proximate cause of a significant presidential initiative on the eve of the next presidential election.

That issue was Jewish refugee immigration to Palestine. President Roosevelt was generally sympathetic to the development of the Jewish national home, but used cautious language when referring to Palestine and avoided pressing the British on immigration so as not to upset Anglo-American relations. In the autumn of 1936, American Jewish leaders alerted the president that the British, in response to a wave of Palestinian Arab violence, were planning to severely restrict Jewish immigration to the Holy Land. The election was just weeks away and with polling in its infancy, it was difficult for the White House to gauge the likely results of the race, a fact that maximized the potential impact of specific blocs of voters. New York, with 47 electoral votes, was by far the most important state in the race

campaign leaflet for Herbert Hoover, 1928

(Pennsylvania was second, with 36). Therefore the president and his advisers had to reckon with the fact that the large Jewish community in New York City could exercise an outsized influence on the election. Weighing the risk versus the gain, FDR calculated that intervention would be worth his while. He quietly pressed the British government to postpone the planned restrictions. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, anxious to have the United States on England’s side in any upcoming conflict with Germany, decided that pleasing Roosevelt on this issue was more important than immediately halting immigration. As a result, the restrictions were postponed. It would be three more years before the British finally imposed their 1939 White Paper. In the interim, more than 50,000 German Jews were able to reach the safety of Palestine.

In the end, Roosevelt beat his Republican challenger that year, Kansas Governor Alf Landon, in every state except Maine and Vermont. He won New York by such an overwhelming majority that his capture of 85%-87% of the Jewish vote did not affect the outcome. Still, FDR’s awareness that there existed a large, registered, and politically committed bloc of Jewish voters in New York sufficed to impact U.S. policy that year in a way that led to the saving of many lives.

Three years later, however, President Roosevelt declined American Jewish requests to put serious pressure on the British to hold off their plan to issue the infamous White Paper. Why? Because timing is everything. In 1936, the Palestine immigration episode took place just weeks before the presidential election, when FDR was particularly sensitive to his electoral needs and therefore was willing to go further on the issue, even if it would irritate London. In the spring of 1939, the next presidential election was more than a year and a half away, and it appears that Roosevelt had not yet made up his mind to run; hence the possibility of losing Jewish votes in New York or elsewhere was not nearly as urgent to him as it had been in 1936. As a result, he declined to extend himself on the Palestine issue.

The 1940 presidential race, pitting President Roosevelt against Republican challenger Wendell Willkie, featured few substantive policy disagreements and none that were of specifically Jewish concern. FDR won overwhelmingly, including an estimated 85%-90% of the Jewish vote.

1944: Roosevelt’s Final Race

The events leading up to the 1944 presidential election illustrate the importance of Jewish political participation and the ability of the Jewish community to influence policymakers based on perceptions of the Jewish vote rather than actual voting patterns.

President Roosevelt and his advisers did not assume that his re-election was a foregone conclusion. The Republicans had scored well in the 1942 midterm congressional elections. If the GOP could hold on to the states it won in the 1940 presidential race, and if the states that went Republican in the 1942 senatorial and gubernatorial races remained Republican in 1944, the GOP’s candidate would win 323 electoral votes—more than enough to capture the White House. FDR himself estimated in one private conversation that of the anticipated fifty million voters, twenty million each were solid for the Democrats and the Republicans, and the other ten million were up for grabs.16

The Republican leadership, concerned about the plight of Jews in Nazi Europe and hoping to lure Jewish voters away from Roosevelt, adopted an unprecedented plank in the party’s 1944 platform, calling attention to the “millions of distressed Jewish men, women and children driven from their homes by tyranny,” and urging “the opening of Palestine to their unrestricted immigration and land ownership” and establishment of a Jewish homeland.17

The Republican move intensified concerns in the White House and Democratic Party leadership that with the help of Jewish voters, the Republican candidate, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, would win his home state, which had the most electoral votes of any state and thus could be the key to the election. “New York State’s electoral votes are by no means certain for the Dem. Party,” one party official noted in an internal memo. Another warned that Dewey could carry upstate New York “by 625,000 to 650,000 votes….I deem it imperative that everything be done to cut this down in order to [e]nsure carrying the state for Roosevelt.” Campaign officials felt the situation was sufficiently dire to warrant FDR making a special campaign trip to New York. As late as October 2, just weeks before Election Day, one Democratic Party activist warned FDR

aide David Niles that “if nothing happens between now and the election date, Dewey will carry NY state.”18

These developments made it possible for American Jewish leaders to plausibly argue that the size of the Jewish vote, especially in New York, would affect the outcome of the election unless Roosevelt and the Democrats took a strong stand in support of Zionism. At the Democratic convention in Chicago, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, America’s most prominent Jewish leader, warned Assistant Attorney General Norman Littell, a Roosevelt delegate, that the failure to adopt a pro-Zionist plank “will lose the President 400,000 or 500,000 votes.”19 The final text the Democrats adopted for their platform was not quite as strong as the GOP’s, but it was close and that was enough. “With the plank in both platforms the thing is lifted above partisanship,” Rabbi Wise exulted afterwards. The adoption of these unprecedented

planks ensured that support for Zionism, and later for Israel, would have an enduring place in American political culture.20

The issue arose again in the weeks before the election, when Wise and his colleagues learned that Governor Dewey intended to issue a pro-Zionist statement. Wise pleaded with the president to issue a comparable statement, telling him “there are things afoot which I do not like, designed to hurt you.” A close associate of Wise reported to colleagues that Wise told FDR “this declaration could secure for [Roosevelt] 200,000 additional votes in New York.” The statement which the president agreed to release, while once again not quite as strong as that of his rival, nonetheless represented another important achievement and helped further cement his party’s platform plank on Zionism. These developments demonstrated how a substantial number

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

of Jewish voters, even after previously siding overwhelmingly with one party, nonetheless carried political clout on both sides of the aisle by virtue of their numbers and political engagement.21 In the end, Roosevelt once again won in a landslide, and also received 90% of Jewish votes.

1948: Truman, Israel and the Jews

The iconic image of a beaming President Harry Truman holding up a copy of the November 3, 1948 edition of the Chicago Tribune with the banner headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” is one of the most famous photographs in American political history. It perfectly encapsulates the extent to which anticipation of a Dewey victory was widespread on the eve of the election. Behind that memorable photo lies a remarkable story about the role of Jewish voters in American politics.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, American Jews energetically pressed the Truman administration to help facilitate creation of a Jewish state. President Truman and his advisers recognized that the politically engaged Jewish community was in a position to impact upcoming elections, and that became an important factor in shaping America’s Palestine policy.

In the summer of 1946, President Truman was prepared to endorse the Morrison-Grady plan, which would have divided the Holy Land into autonomous zones under British rule instead of creating a Jewish state. But congressional elections were approaching. The chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee predicted that “If this plan goes into effect it would be useless for the Democrats to nominate a state ticket this fall,” and another New York Democratic Party leader warned that if the administration failed to support a Jewish state, “the effects will be severely felt in November.” As a result, Truman dumped MorrisonGrady.22 When U.S. envoys to Arab countries complained to Truman that his policy was too pro-Zionist, he reportedly replied: “I’m sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for

the success of Zionism; I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”23

Truman was looking at the 1946 midterm congressional elections and thinking ahead to 1948, when he expected the Republicans would again nominate Thomas Dewey. He was already worried that—as he told the First Lady—“the Jews…seem to be ready to go for Dewey.”24 That perception would result in another important turning point in U.S. policy. Rumors that Dewey planned to deliver a strongly pro-Zionist speech just before election day in 1946 moved Truman’s advisers to persuade him that “the Jewish vote in New York is going to be crucial” and therefore he needed to preempt the GOP by announcing, for the first time, that he supported creation of a Jewish state in some part of Palestine. “It should...have a very desirable political effect upon our chances in New York,” Brooklyn congressman Emanuel Celler wrote Truman. In a message to American Jewry on the eve of Yom Kippur, Truman cautiously noted that Zionist leaders sought “a viable Jewish state,” and he believed that a solution “along these lines” would “command the support of public opinion in the United States.” Despite the hedging, the statement was treated by the news media and public as a major policy shift. That helped cement the path toward U.S. support for Israel’s creation.25

Truman’s decision to support the November 1947 United Nations resolution recommending partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states likewise was influenced by his perception that large numbers of Jewish Democrats were ready to defect to the GOP. Both the outgoing chairman of the Democratic National

Campaign sound truck for Henry Wallace, 1948. Note the “No Israel Embargo” sign in the upper right.

Committee and his successor advised Truman that if he failed to support Jewish statehood, it would cost him two or three states in the 1948 election, resulting in his defeat. But there were also significant forces within the administration opposed to Jewish statehood, because they regarded relations with the Arab world— and keeping the U.S. far from the Mideast conflict—was paramount. As a result, the administration supported the UN resolution, but soon afterwards began backtracking in response to Arab rejectionism.

The ongoing controversy played out in February 1948, in a special election to fill a vacant congressional seat in the Bronx, New York. The Democratic nominee, Karl Propper, was fully backed by the local party machine, and the district was so overwhelmingly Democratic— its voters had not sent a Republican to congress in more than twenty years—that the GOP did not even mount an active campaign. Propper’s main challenger was the little-known nominee of the leftwing American Labor Party, Leo Isacson. Former vice president Henry Wallace, who was planning to run as the Progressive Party candidate for president in November, convinced Isacson to turn the Bronx congressional race into a test of Jewish concern over Truman’s Palestine policy.

The Democrats brought the beloved former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, to campaign for Propper. Wallace countered by repeatedly visiting the district to campaign for Isacson, hammering away on the Palestine

issue. Truman “talks Jewish but acts Arab,” Wallace charged, urging Jewish voters to reject Propper as a way of sending the administration a message about its Palestine policy. They did; Isacson swamped Propper, 55% to 31%. The result sent shock waves through the White House.26

With the British planning to withdraw from Palestine in May and Zionist leaders poised to declare a state, White House aides warned Truman that if a Jewish state were proclaimed without U.S. recognition, American Jews and prominent Republicans would lead a chorus of protests, and the administration would, as one adviser put it, “pay a high political price [in Jewish votes] for it is especially important in a [presidential] election year...” Another aide urged the president to support Zionism because the Jewish vote was “important” in New York, and New York’s 47 electoral votes “are naturally the first prize in any election.” New York Democratic leaders made the same point to Truman in the days leading up to Israel’s proclamation of independence on May 15. When a friend asked Truman, in the final hours, about his intentions, the president replied,“Well, how many Arabs are there as registered voters in the United States?” He answered that question on May 15 by recognizing the State of Israel just minutes after its proclamation.27 The New York Times reported that “the speedy recognition accorded to Israel by the Truman administration has done much to alleviate the hostility held toward the President by many New York unionists, particularly in the garment trades [i.e., Jews].”28

The president’s endorsement of the creation of Israel was not based solely on his concern about the Jewish vote. Every presidential decision is subject to a variety of influences. If Truman had been convinced that supporting Israel would have dragged America into a Mideast war, as Defense Department officials warned, or that it would irrevocably harm relations with the Arab world, as his State Department counseled, he would not have recognized the new Jewish state. But those forecasts were not certainties, and therefore the concerns of Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel had to be given serious consideration as well.

Nonetheless, Truman hedged his decision somewhat. While extending de facto recognition to the Jewish state, he decided to maintain the arms embargo that he had imposed on the Middle East beginning the previous December. The embargo primarily affected the Jews, since the Arab states already had fully equipped armies

President Harry S. Truman

and were receiving additional weapons from Great Britain and other countries. The embargo was implemented so zealously that the U.S. rejected even a request for armored plates to shield Jewish civilian buses from Arab attackers. In a heartfelt appeal to Truman to drop the embargo, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann wrote: “The choice of our people, Mr. President, is between Statehood and extermination.” Truman refused to budge. A face to face plea by Golda Meir to Eleanor Roosevelt to press Truman on the embargo likewise yielded no results.29

Beginning the day the Jewish state was proclaimed in May, Henry Wallace made the Israel arms embargo a featured issue of his candidacy.30 At campaign rallies in Los Angeles and San Francisco, he accused the Truman administration of “betraying the Jewish pioneers in Palestine for the sake of oil and profits.”31 Multiple media reports suggested the embargo was “hurting the President’s chances of carrying New York City in the coming national election” by driving traditional Democratic voters into the Wallace camp.32 Jewish organizations and the Yiddish-language press strongly criticized the administration’s Palestine policy, and Democratic congressmen who appeared before Jewish audiences as Truman campaign surrogates were roundly booed.33 Sound trucks advertising a pro-Wallace rally at Yankee Stadium were emblazoned with slogans identifying the four main themes of the rally; one was “Lift Israel Embargo.”34 President Truman’s election eve speech at Madison Square Garden was described in the New York press as “a direct bid for a sizable bloc of lukewarm New York City Democrats and independents [who] may even vote for Henry Wallace because of their dissatisfaction with Truman’s record, particularly on Palestine.”35

On Election Day, Dewey won New York, with its 47 electoral votes, by 60,959 votes, slightly under 1% of the total. In his memoirs, Truman complained that “if it had not been for the half million American Labor Party votes which went to Wallace in New York State, I would have beaten Dewey in his own state by a majority of 300,000.”36 He was referring to the fact that since both the Progressive Party and the American Labor Party endorsed Wallace, his name appeared on the ballot twice, giving voters the option to choose Wallace while identifying with the party to which they felt closest.

A significant portion of those American Labor Party votes were cast by Jews. An examination of election districts in the most heavily-Jewish neighborhoods of New York City reveals a remarkably high level of support for Wallace. In two of the Manhattan districts, Wallace finished second to Truman, and in the third he nearly tied Dewey, with Wallace’s support ranging from 21% to 28%. In the Bronx, Wallace won 23% or more in four out of six districts, finishing ahead of Dewey in five of the six. In four of seven Brooklyn districts, Wallace won between 15% and 20%; in Brownsville, the most densely-Jewish neighborhood in the country, Wallace won 28.8%. Overall, it would seem that Wallace received about 24% of the Jewish vote in New York City. It was an extraordinary achievement for a third-party candidate who was universally regarded as having no chance of winning the election, and who was competing against both an incumbent Democratic president and a Republican who was the state’s popular governor.37

Truman overcame his loss in New York by eking out narrow victories—less than 1%—over Dewey in a number of other states that had large numbers of electoral votes. He won California (25 electoral votes) by 17,865 votes (.44%); Ohio (25) by 7,107 votes (.24%); and Illinois (18) by 33,612 votes (.85%). The number of Jewish voters in those states far surpassed Truman’s margins of victory. Evidently Truman’s recognition of Israel, despite the arms embargo, was just enough to keep more Jewish voters in those states from tipping the election to Dewey.38 The overall division of the Jewish vote in New York State was 45% for Truman, 33% for Wallace, and 22% for Dewey; nationwide, it was 54% for Truman, 28% for Dewey, and 18% for Wallace.

Henry A. Wallace

Several factors strongly indicate that it was Israel, and not other issues, which was decisive in the decision of so many New York Jews to back Wallace. First, it is unlikely there still were within the Jewish community enough devoted partisans of the far left to produce the levels of Jewish support that Wallace received, simply on the basis of his leftwing ideology. The Americanization of the immigration generation had been accompanied by a trend towards political moderation; note that the overwhelming majority of Jews had felt comfortable voting for the Democratic candidate in each of the previous five presidential elections.

Second, there was substantial dissatisfaction in the Jewish community regarding Truman’s wavering Palestine policy, especially the arms embargo. Third, during the 1948 election campaign, the New York press emphasized that Israel was in grave danger and that the Truman administration’s policies were partly to blame, meaning Israel was very much on Jewish voters’ minds as Election Day approached, especially those in New York. Finally, Wallace strove to distinguish himself as the pro-Israel candidate in the race, and he made a compelling case.39

What Wallace had working against him in the Jewish community was the widespread belief that he had no chance of winning the election. Hence a vote for Wallace constituted a conscious decision to throw away one’s vote as an act of protest. Such voters also knew that by pulling the lever for the Progressive candidate, they were probably harming President Truman’s chances and increasing the possibility of a Republican victory. They had to feel so strongly for Wallace, or against Truman, that they were willing to risk having Dewey in the White

House. Some portion of Jewish voters for Wallace undoubtedly did come from the small hardcore radical wing of the Jewish community. But for Wallace to win a substantial number of Jewish votes in New York City necessitated backing from much more than the dwindling ranks of Jewish socialists. It required a significant number of Jewish Democrats to feel so disappointed by President Truman’s treatment of Israel that they were willing to see him go down in defeat.

1952–1964:

The Eisenhower and Kennedy Years

From 1952 to 1964, presidential elections were dominated by Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, and their respective vice presidents, Richard M. Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson. It was a period in which issues of Jewish concern were not a significant part of the presidential campaigns, and in which Jewish voting patterns solidified along the lines begun with Al Smith in 1928.

Israel’s pre-emptive strike in response to Egypt’s military buildup in 1956 took place prior to that year’s U.S. presidential election, but the dispute between Israel and the United States over Israel’s occupation of the Sinai occurred only later. In any event, the election would not have served as a barometer of dissatisfaction in the Jewish community over President Eisenhower’s pressure on Israel, because the large majority of Jews supported his opponent anyway.

Jewish voters preferred Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson over General Eisenhower by similar margins in 1952 and again in 1956, 75% to 25% and 71% to 29%, respectively. The small increase in support for Eisenhower’s reelection likely was the result of the natural appeal of a popular incumbent. However, since these numbers are less than precise, it is also possible there was no noticeable change at all.

After the Sinai episode, Israel-U.S. relations generally proceeded smoothly until the eve of the 1967 Six Day War. In the absence of any issues of specific Jewish concern, the next factor most likely to alter the trajectory of Jewish voting patterns is the nomination by either party of a candidate perceived as noticeably more

extreme than his predecessors. This was the case with Richard M. Nixon, the Republican nominee in 1960, who was widely perceived as having been associated with the excesses of McCarthyism, and whose denunciations of intellectuals worried some that he was using the term as a code word for “Jews.”

Senator John F. Kennedy’s record as a member of the House of Representatives was no more outstanding regarding Israel than Nixon’s had been. But his positions on domestic concerns lined up more closely with the views of most American Jews than did those of his conservative Republican opponent, something Kennedy was able to demonstrate clearly in his public debate with Nixon. That debate was the first ever to be televised and therefore became an especially impactful point in the 1960 presidential race. Kennedy’s Catholicism also may have worked to his advantage with the Jewish community, since, as in 1928, there was some expectation among Jewish voters that a member of a religious minority would be particularly sensitive to the sentiments of other religious minorities. Some analysts, such as the prominent sociologist of religion Will Herberg, argued that for many Jews, electing a Catholic served as a kind of symbolic correction of the injustice of ethnic immigrants and other minorities historically being excluded from the highest echelons of power in the United States. The result was a Jewish vote for Kennedy over Nixon in 1960 by 86% to 14%, according to an average of several analyses.40

The race as a whole, however, was extremely close. Once again, the winner captured a number of states with large Jewish populations by very narrow margins, meaning that a shift by even a modest number of Jewish voters in certain areas could have changed the overall outcome. Kennedy won Illinois, with its 27 electoral votes, by just 8,858 votes, and New Jersey, with 16, by only 22,091 votes—both totals far smaller than their respective Jewish populations. Victories in those two states by Nixon would have made him president in 1960.

The level of affection among Jewish voters for President Kennedy, in part because of his pro-Israel orientation, intensified with sympathy over his assassination. Some of that sentiment carried over to his younger brother Robert F. Kennedy, when he ran for a U.S. senate seat in

New York in 1964. That, together with the fact that registered Jewish Democrats have long heavily outnumbered Jewish Republicans in New York, gave Bobby Kennedy a significant advantage in the race. In his campaign appearances before Jewish audiences, Kennedy advocated substantial U.S. aid to Israel as well as abolition of the old immigration quota system, which had been in force since the 1920s. He also made sure to highlight the month he spent in the Holy Land on the eve of Israel’s independence in 1948, writing sympathetic news dispatches for the Boston Post.

On the other hand, the incumbent, Senator Kenneth Keating, was the kind of moderate Republican who could appeal to Jewish voters. He was a strong advocate of desegregation, and refused to endorse his party’s presidential nominee that year, the staunchly conservative senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater. Keating strongly endorsed aid to Israel and urged NATO to grant membership to the Jewish state.41 Keating also distinguished himself as an early critic of anti-Jewish hate education, calling for “an all-out UN effort to monitor and condemn hate mongering propaganda in the Middle East.”42 Keating’s aides pointed out that during his years

John F. Kennedy

in office, he was “diligent in attending Bar Mitzvahs, weddings and Jewish fund-raisings” and “also has an unblemished record in support of Israel.”43 In the end, Kennedy won 60% of the vote in heavily-Jewish districts to Keating’s 40%, which was helpful although not critical to RFK’s 600,000-plus vote margin of victory. It was noteworthy, however, that Keating’s 40% was a ten-point improvement over the share of the Jewish vote he won when he first ran in 1958, a fact which GOP strategists could regard as hopeful.

In the 1964 presidential election, there was never any possibility that Senator Goldwater would receive a noticeable slice of the Jewish vote. His positions on the issues of the day were even more consistently conservative than Nixon’s, thus putting him at odds with the overwhelming majority of Jewish voters. In addition, President Lyndon Johnson had continued President Kennedy’s friendly policy toward Israel. As a result, Johnson defeated Goldwater among Jews by an unprecedented margin of about 94% to 6%, in an election so lopsided that the Jewish vote would not have had any impact in any event.44

1968–1972: The Nixon Years

Former Vice President Richard Nixon won the 1968 Republican presidential nomination. Sensing that the country’s growing social and political unrest might move some Jewish voters toward the Republican camp, Nixon instructed his staff to actively solicit Jewish votes. He cited the high level of Jewish political participation as evidence of the value of their votes. William Safire, one of Nixon’s Jewish speechwriters, later recalled: “Nixon pointed out to several of us in 1968 [that] Jews are in the habit of voting, increasing their significance in the critical states by nearly half again [relative to their proportion of the national population]. On top of that, every new Jewish vote Nixon could get was really two votes, since it usually meant the reduction of a vote against him.” Nixon also was encouraged by the fact that moderate Republican candidates in state races, such as Governor Nelson Rockefeller and U.S. Senator Jacob Javits, in New York, “would get as high as 35 percent [of the Jewish vote],

indicating that there was room for a 10 percent turnaround, enough to swing a key state in a tight election.”45

In an address to B’nai B’rith’s national convention in September, Nixon pledged to supply Israel with supersonic Phantom F-4 jets, something President Johnson had been delaying. A Jewish “Democrats for Nixon” group sponsored ads in Jewish newspapers showing photos of the Republican nominee with Moshe Dayan and Jacob Javits, and depicting the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, as soft on inner-city rioters.46 These moves seemed to pay off, as a Gallup poll in early October found just 51% of Jewish voters backing Humphrey, with 31% for Nixon (and 4% favoring extremist third party candidate George Wallace), and 14% undecided. That would have been a significant improvement over the Republican share of the Jewish vote in 1960 and 1964.47 But the Democrats were able to fend off the challenge, as Humphrey made a number of law-andorder themed speeches, and President Johnson belatedly approved the jet sale to Israel.48

In the end, Nixon triumphed in an extremely close election. The final breakdown of the Jewish vote was about 80% for Humphrey, 19% for Nixon, and 1% for Wallace. None of the states that Nixon won were so close, and had such a substantial Jewish population,

Frank Rizzo

that a larger share of the Jewish vote for Humphrey there would have altered the outcome.

Mayoral elections in Los Angeles, in 1969, and Philadelphia, in 1971, indicated shifts in Jewish voting preferences. In L.A., both the liberal Democratic challenger, Tom Bradley, and the incumbent, law-andorder Republican Sam Yorty, heavily targeted the city’s large Jewish community. Bradley won only 54% of the Jewish vote, a sharp decrease from his predecessors; the 46% for Yorty was an unusually high amount for a conservative Republican in that city. After interviewing voters and examining the returns in specific districts, the Los Angeles Times concluded that many Jewish voters, like some other liberal or centrist voters, backed Yorty because of fears that, as interviewees put it, Bradley “couldn’t handle troublemakers” and “the whole Police Department would fall apart” if he became mayor. Recent violent student demonstrations in the city may also have pushed some liberal-minded voters into Yorty’s column, the Times believed.49

A similar trend was evident in Philadelphia’s mayoral race in 1971. Frank Rizzo, a conservative police commissioner who billed himself as “the toughest cop in America,” ran against centrist city councilman Thacher Longstreth. Early on, Tom Fox, political affairs columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, predicted that significant numbers of politically liberal Jews in the city would support the conservative Rizzo. Many merchants had been murdered “in the small shops and stores of the inner city [and] almost all of the victims were Jews,” Fox wrote. As a result, “the political values of the Jews have changed.” Increasingly, Jews saw Rizzo as “the protecter.” Fox’s forecast was accurate; an estimated 50% of Jewish voters supported Rizzo.50

Writing in the OU’s Jewish Life (precursor to Jewish Action) in 1969, political analyst C. Daniel Chill noted trends in two recent New York City elections that seemed to portend a new Jewish voting pattern. In the Democratic primary for mayor in 1965, the most conservative candidate, Abraham Beame, was the clear winner in the heavily-Jewish neighborhoods of Flatbush, Borough Park, and Far Rockaway. In those same neighborhoods in the 1969 Democratic mayor primary, Mario Procaccino, who was the most conservative of the candidates that year, won a large plurality, beating out two Jewish rivals—despite the fact that traditionally, Italian-American candidates had not fared well in Jewish electoral districts when

competing candidates were Jewish.51

Chill noted an apparently similar trend in internal Democratic Party races in Manhattan that same year. In one, a “blatant right-of- center” candidate defeated “the radical left-wing incumbent” for the position of Democratic Party district leader; in the other, a conservative challenger lost to an incumbent liberal Democratic district leader by only a handful of votes.52

In that year’s mayoral election, Mayor John Lindsay, a liberal on crime and race relations, was challenged by Procaccino, the conservative law-and-order candidate. (It was Procaccino who coined the term “limousine liberals” to characterize wealthy individuals who seem out of touch with the impact of liberal social or political policies.) Lindsay did well in heavily-Jewish sections of Manhattan and the more prosperous neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn, but Procaccino won in predominantly Jewish middle-income and lower-income areas in those boroughs. Each candidate received about 45% of the Jewish vote overall.53

In the months preceding the 1972 presidential election, a special congressional election in the heavily-Orthodox Williamsburg section of Brooklyn offered additional indications of changes in Jewish voting. The conservative Catholic incumbent, Rep. John Rooney, was challenged by a liberal Jewish Democrat, Allard Lowenstein. Rooney won by 2,145 votes. The New York Times commented: “With polls and conversations indicating a shift among the hasidim from the Democrats to President Nixon, the Republicans are hopeful of scoring large gains in Hasidic communities this fall.”54

The outcome of that Brooklyn race was not a good omen for the Democrats, whose presidential nominee that year, Senator George McGovern, was situated firmly on

Daniel P. Moynihan

the left wing of the party and advocated policies at odds with the sentiments of many in the Jewish community. McGovern favored an American retreat from overseas involvement, which some Jewish voters feared would leave Israel vulnerable to Soviet-backed aggression. His approach to crime and race relations raised concerns among Jewish residents of inner-city areas in particular.55 Newsweek reported that “some of the Democratic Party’s wealthiest Jewish contributors” were closing their wallets to McGovern.56 An analysis by the prominent syndicated columnists Evans and Novak argued that Nixon might have a chance at winning New York State—a prize the Republicans had not captured since 1956. The Jewish vote could be decisive if the race was “fairly close” in New York, they wrote. “In 1968 [Nixon] got a mere 18 percent of the Jewish vote in New York, but he would have carried the state against Humphrey with a switch of only 185,000 votes, a swing by no means improbable if the Jewish vote splits closer than 50–50 on November 8.”57

There was indeed a notable shift of Jewish voters away from the Democrats on Election Day in 1972. According to exit polls, McGovern received about 65% of Jewish votes, while Nixon won 35%. That was the largest share of the Jewish electorate captured by a Republican presidential nominee since the pre-Franklin D. Roosevelt years.58

A post-election analysis by the American Jewish Committee confirmed the drop-off in Jewish support for the Democrats, especially among among middle-income and lower-income voters. In heavily-Jewish voting districts in Long Island, McGovern won 69%, as compared to the 80% Humphrey received four years earlier. In heavily-Jewish Brooklyn districts, McGovern won 61%, down from Humphrey’s 84%.59 The outcome in 1972 further cemented the expectation that if a party or its nominee are perceived as turning sharply against Israel or unsympathetic on other Jewish concerns, a significant number of Jews likely will vote for the other candidate, a political reality that maximizes the impact of the Jewish vote in a close contest.

1976–1988: From Carter to Reagan

The trend of Jewish voters turning away from more liberal candidates because of their stands on Israel and other issues of Jewish concern continued in 1976, first in a key U.S. senate contest and then in the presidential race.

Daniel P. Moynihan, a centrist, strongly impressed Jewish voters with his vigorous defense of Israel as US ambassador to the United Nations, especially following the 1975 Zionism-is-racism resolution. In the autumn of 1976, he competed in the Democratic primary for Senate against the outspokenly liberal Rep. Bella Abzug and three minor candidates. Some years earlier, Abzug was reported, on more than one occasion, to have expressed opposition to selling fighter jets to Israel, a position from which she belatedly distanced herself.60

The race provided an especially valuable means of gauging the mood among Jewish voters and the impact of their choices. Israel and other Jewish concerns were major topics of debate during the campaign because, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted, “New York’s Jewish voters traditionally vote in primaries in larger numbers than any other group,” which “proved to be important in a race where less than 25 percent of the registered Democrats turned out at the polls…” Moynihan narrowly defeated Abzug, and the Jewish vote proved crucial. He received an estimated 40% of the sizable Jewish vote in New York City, while Abzug won about 30% (the remainder was split among the other candidates). Moynihan was then elected by a wide margin in the general election two months later.61

That year’s presidential race presented less of a clear choice for Jewish voters. On the one hand, President Nixon’s resignation in 1974 as a result of the Watergate scandal made the Republicans a less attractive choice to some Jews who had voted for the president in 1972. In addition, Nixon’s replacement, Gerald R. Ford, and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, provoked a major conflict with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1975. That episode culminated in Kissinger orchestrating a “reassessment” of U.S.-Israeli relations that consisted of suspending American arms shipments in order to bring about substantial Israeli territorial concessions to Egypt. But there were countervailing factors as well. The Israeli-Egyptian negotiations reached a successful

conclusion; the Jewish community’s favored candidate for the Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Henry M. Jackson, was defeated in the primaries; Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter was unknown to American Jewry; and Carter, as a Southern Baptist, was culturally far removed from most Jews. A different Democratic challenger might have restored the division of Jewish votes back to pre-Nixon levels. Instead, according to exit polling, Jewish support for Carter ranged from 64% to 72%, with Jewish votes for Ford between 28% and 35%.62

The 1976 race once again illustrated the potential impact of Jewish voters. Carter beat Ford by 11,000 votes in Ohio, a state with a Jewish population of 140,000; and he defeated Ford by 123,000 votes in Pennsylvania, where there were 400,000 Jews. Had Ford attracted enough Jewish votes to swing just those two states, he would have won the election.

Another way in which the Jewish vote could have tipped the 1976 election to Ford would have been through a modestly different outcome in New York State. Although New York had been won by the Democratic presidential nominee in three of the previous four elections, Carter, as a southern governor, did not have an especially strong base there. In the end, his triumph in the Empire State was narrow. The Democratic nominee defeated President Ford in New York by a margin of just 4%, that is, 288,767 votes. Jewish voters in New York supported Carter by about 70% to 30%. If 145,000 Jews in New York had voted for Ford instead of Carter (and thus Carter would have won the state’s Jewish vote by 52% to 48% instead of 70% to 30%), Ford would have won New York State. The national race was so close that if Ford had triumphed in New York, he would have won the election, even if he lost Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Soon after becoming president, Carter and his spokespeople made statements and adopted policies toward Israel that were widely perceived in the Jewish community as unfriendly. They included calling for establishment of a “Palestinian homeland”; inviting the Soviets to co-chair a Mideast peace conference; condemning Israel for permitting Jews to reside in the disputed 1967 territories; supplying advanced fighter jets to Egypt and Saudi Arabia; pressuring Israel to halt its anti-terrorist operation in southern Lebanon in 1978; and supporting a United Nations resolution calling Jerusalem “occupied Arab territory” (and then

claiming the White House actually intended to abstain rather than vote in favor). It did not help that the president’s brother was a paid agent of the Libyan government, held meetings with senior PLO terrorists, and made antisemitic remarks.63

Carter represented a new phenomenon in the history of the Jewish vote: an incumbent Democratic president who was widely perceived by Jews as unsympathetic, or even hostile, to Israel. This meant that for the first time, the question of whether traditionally Democratic Jewish voters would defect from a president of their party over the issue of Israel would be put to the test.

Carter’s standing among Jewish voters first was tested in the primaries. U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, challenging the president for the Democratic nomination, made Israel one of his campaign issues. He repeatedly accused Carter of “flirtation with the PLO” and criticized the president for not supporting Israeli control of Jerusalem. Kennedy’s overwhelming victory over Carter in the New York primary, by 59% to 41%, was boosted by his capture of 79% of the state’s Jewish voters. Kennedy’s victories in California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania likely were also aided by Jewish support, especially the latter, which he won by just 45.7% to 45.4%.64

Although Carter won the 1980 nomination, the strong Jewish backing for the Kennedy campaign yielded an important victory at the Democratic convention. Carter’s supporters, evidently acting at the behest of the White House, sought to make an important change to an existing party plank that called for recognizing united Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They wanted to add a sentence suggesting that U.S. action on Jerusalem

President Jimmy Carter

might be postponed due to America’s “deep engagement in the delicate process of promoting a wider peace for Israel.” The Kennedy forces, backed by the implicit threat of Jewish electoral defections in November, prevented that language from being added to the Jerusalem section and instead moved it elsewhere in the platform, so that it did not imply any compromise on Jerusalem.65

As the November election approached, the Jewish community was brimming with resentment at President Carter’s policies toward Israel, and had been reminded about that at every turn by Senator Kennedy. This gave the Republican nominee, former California governor Ronald Reagan, considerable ammunition in his pitch for Jewish votes. The disadvantage Reagan faced in seeking Jewish support was that his positions on domestic issues were strictly conservative and thus at odds with the views of most American Jews. Nonetheless, dissatisfaction over Carter regarding Israel was so widespread that the 1980 presidential election became a pivotal moment in the history of the Jewish vote in America. For the first time since 1920, a majority of Jewish voters declined to vote for the Democratic presidential nominee. Only 40% supported President Carter; about 40% supported Reagan. The remaining 20% backed third party candidate John Anderson, who had no special attraction for Jewish voters other than that he was neither Carter nor Reagan. A centrist Republican might well have captured a majority of the Jewish vote. Even the 40-40 outcome, however, arguably altered the political landscape by establishing the potential for even greater shifts in Jewish voting over Israel policy in the future. The election itself, however, was not impacted by the Jewish vote, as Reagan swept 46 of the 50 states.

The Jewish vote for Reagan was essentially a protest vote—a protest against Carter, more than an endorsement of Reagan. Four years later, when Reagan faced a Democratic presidential nominee who was widely perceived as pro-Israel, most of the Jews who voted for him the first time returned to traditional voting patterns. In 1984, Reagan ran for re-election against Sen. Walter Mondale, who had been Carter’s vice president. During his years in the Senate, Mondale had earned a reputation for being strongly pro-Israel, and few in the Jewish community blamed him for Carter’s policies toward Israel. As a result, Mondale

won 64%-68% of the Jewish vote to Reagan’s 31%-35%, according to most estimates.66

Those numbers held steady four years later, when the Republicans nominated former ambassador George H.W. Bush, who had no particular record on Israel, to run against the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, who likewise had nothing pro or anti-Israel in his record. Dukakis captured about 69% of Jewish votes, compared to 30% for Bush.67

1992–2004: From Clinton to Bush

Based on the outcomes in the 1984 and 1988 presidential elections, the 1992 race seemed likely to follow a similar trajectory, with the Democratic candidate expected to receive two thirds to three quarters of the Jewish vote. As it turned out, a number of unfriendly actions toward Israel by the Bush administration alienated part of the Republican Jewish base and returned the Jewish vote for the Democratic nominee to a level approaching Humphrey-Nixon in 1968.

At the end of 1988, even before officially taking office, the new administration shocked the Jewish world by recognizing the PLO and opening negotiations with Yasir Arafat. During the next fifteen months, there were repeated conflicts between Jewish critics and the Bush administration over its friendly relationship with the PLO, until an attempted mass terror attack in the spring of 1990 forced Washington to break off ties with Arafat. In 1991, President Bush withheld loan guarantees from Israel in an attempt to restrict where Russian and Ethiopian Jewish immigrants would be permitted to reside. In what some Jewish leaders characterized as veiled antisemitism, the president publicly complained that he was “one lonely little guy” up against “a thousand” Jewish lobbyists supporting the loans. Another low point in the administration’s Israel policy came in the spring of 1992, when it was revealed that Secretary of State James Baker, commenting on Jewish criticism of his pressure on Israel, replied, “F—- the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway.”68 That would soon become a self-fulfilling prophecy of significant proportions.

Five women were elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, leading women’s rights activists to proclaim it the “Year of the Woman.” But a sixth female candidate who was widely expected to triumph ultimately fell short, as a result of an unusual demonstration of the strength of the Jewish vote. Lynn Yeakel, the leader of a women’s service organization, emerged as the surprise winner in that spring’s Democratic primary for a U.S. senate seat from Pennsylvania, despite competition from seasoned office holders. Feminists were especially galvanized by the Yeakel victory because she was running against incumbent Republican Arlen Specter, who had strongly challenged Anita Hill during the hearings over the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas. Specter was Jewish, and a very moderate Republican, which gave him an advantage among the state’s Jewish voters. But what inspired a swell of Jewish electoral support for Specter was a series of revelations regarding Yeakel’s leadership position in a church that regularly hosted anti-Israel programs and speakers, some of whom had even indulged in antisemitic stereotyping.69 Specter ultimately eked out a narrow victory in November, and analyses showed that Philadelphia’s heavily-Jewish suburbs were the source of his strongest support.70

The Jewish vote also played a notable role in a second U.S. senate race that year. Senator Alfonse D’Amato, a pro-Israel conservative Republican from New York, faced a strong challenge from a Jewish Democrat, state attorney general Robert Abrams, who was Jewish, had roots in the Soviet Jewry protest movement, and likewise was a strong supporter of Israel.

Although Abrams led in the polls throughout the race, D’Amato won by just over 80,000 votes, 49% to 47.8%. He received an estimated 40% of Jewish votes, which was tied for the highest total ever won by a Republican candidate for senate from the state.71

In that fall’s presidential race, Jews went overwhelmingly for the Democratic nominee, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, giving him an estimated 74% of their votes, with just 16% supporting President Bush, and the remaining 10% backing third party candidate Ross Perot. That was the lowest level of Jewish support for a Republican presidential nominee since 1968. Bush’s share of the Jewish vote was reduced by almost half from what he received four years earlier. Clinton won the election decisively, including by wide margins in states with large Jewish populations, such as California, New York, and Pennsylvania, so the Jewish vote was not a factor in the outcome.

The Clinton administration was widely perceived by Jewish voters as pro-Israel. There were a few early conflicts with Israel, particularly Clinton’s pressure on Israel to readmit 400 deported Hamas terrorist leaders. But the signing of the Oslo accords on the White House lawn in 1993 cemented Jewish sympathy for the president. In the 1996 presidential race, Clinton’s share of the Jewish vote rose to 78%, with 16% for his Republican challenger, Senator Bob Dole (with the remainder divided among small independent candidates). The results were very similar to 1992, with Clinton winning significantly more electoral votes than his rivals. Once again, he won by large majorities in California, New York, and Pennsylvania, meaning the Jewish vote did not play a role.

Senator Arlen Specter

In 2000, however, the Jewish vote unexpectedly played a decisive role in the outcome of the election. The Democrats began the race with a significant advantage in the Jewish community: the nominee, Vice President Al Gore, was widely perceived as pro-Israel, and his running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, was the first Jew ever nominated on a major party ticket. Not surprisingly, Gore and Lieberman received about 78% of Jewish votes. The reason it was not higher than that is that by 2000, there was a solid bloc of politically conservative Jews, about one-fourth of the Jewish electorate, who could be expected to support the Republican nominee almost no matter what. Thus Texas Governor George W. Bush, who had no particular record on Israel or other Jewish concerns, won 21% of the Jewish vote. The extremely close race hinged on the outcome in Florida, which had a Jewish population in excess of 600,000. After a prolonged legal battle, Bush was declared the winner in Florida by 537 votes, which in turn decided the national election. It was a classic example of how even though the Republican won only a small minority of the Jewish vote, he had chipped away just enough Jewish support from his Democratic rival to help him emerge victorious.

Bush’s re-election effort, in 2004, against U.S. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, followed the familiar trajectory among Jewish voters. Both candidates were perceived as generally pro-Israel, so Jewish voting fell along well-established lines on domestic issues. Thus the Democrat received about 76% of Jewish votes, the incumbent Republican president 24%. This time Bush’s victory was substantial, so the Jewish vote did not affect the outcome.

2008–2024: Obama, Trump, and Biden

The 2008 presidential election found both the Democratic nominee, U.S. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, and the GOP candidate, U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, pledging to support Israel. Their respective voting records raised no red flags for Jewish voters. All other issues being more or less equal, the historic prospect of the first African-American president helped ensure strong Jewish support for Obama. The final breakdown of the Jewish vote was along the lines of other recent presidential elections: 78% for Obama, 21% for McCain. Obama’s wide margins of victory in the major electoral states of California, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania meant that the Jewish vote there did not impact the outcome.

President Obama’s policy toward Israel got off to a rocky start, and went downhill from there. In response to massive Hamas rocket fire, Israel launched a substantial ground operation in Gaza in late December 2008. Officials of the incoming administration pressured the Israelis to halt their operation prematurely, so that it would end prior to Obama’s inauguration in January. The new president’s first overseas trip began with a June 2009 speech in Cairo blaming the West for tensions between the United States and the Muslim world, pledging to be more sensitive to Muslim concerns in the future, and even suggesting a comparison between Palestinian statelessness and Jewish suffering in the Holocaust.72

Obama’s two terms were marked by repeated clashes with Israel that created considerable alarm in the Jewish community. An off-year special election for a congressional seat in New York City in September 2011 proved to be a bellwether of Jewish voters’ sentiment toward the

President Barack Obama

administration. The race took place in the 9th District, comprising portions of Long Island and Queens, which had not elected a Republican to Congress since 1923. Surveys indicated the district was about 30% Jewish.

The Democratic nominee, David Weprin, was a New York State assemblyman, a strong supporter of Israel, and an Orthodox Jew. Democrats outnumbered Republicans three to one in the district. Weprin’s problem was that as a Democrat, he was identified with the Obama administration. His Republican rival was a little-known businessman named Bob Turner, who decided to make Israel policy the centerpiece of his campaign. Former New York City mayor Ed Koch helped turn the race into a referendum on Jewish attitudes toward Obama on Israel, by urging Jewish voters to cross party lines and support Turner as a protest against the administration’s Israel policy. As part of his efforts to attract Jewish support, Turner sent letters to 5,000 American citizens in Israel who were eligible to vote in his district. His margin of victory was 4,128 votes (52% to 47%).73

In the end, however, the sentiment expressed in that congressional race did not carry over into the presidential election the following year. It may seem counterintuitive that a large majority of Jews would vote for Obama in 2012 despite U.S.-Israel tensions. The likely reason is that the administration’s conflicts with Israel mostly remained in the realm of rhetoric rather than policy. Despite U.S. officials’ critical comments and leaking of unfriendly stories about Israel to the press, there were no major changes in substantive matters such as U.S. military assistance to the Jewish state. As a result, Israeli officials, too, went to great lengths to paper over apparent differences between the two countries. When the votes were counted in November 2012, Jewish support for Obama had dropped from the 78% he won four years earlier to 69% when he ran against Republican Mitt Romney in 2012. Although that was only a modest decrease, it represented the lowest total for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1984. In a close election, such as Bush-Gore in 2000, even a 9% reduction in Jewish votes can have an impact.

The next presidential election, in 2016, posed an unusual choice for Jewish voters. The Democratic nominee, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, promised to support Israel, but had been closely involved in the Obama administration’s policy toward Israel, and prior to that, she had been an early supporter of Palestinian statehood. The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, pledged support for Israel but had a record of off-putting statements on a number of issues that alienated potential Jewish backers.

The final division of the Jewish vote was similar to other recent years: 71% for Clinton, 24% for Trump (and 5% for minor candidates). The overall race was so close, and the margin of victory in several states with large Jewish populations was so narrow, that even a modest change in the Jewish vote there could have tipped the election. For example, if 28,000 Trump voters in Pennsylvania had voted for Clinton instead, and there had been a shift of about 57,000 votes from Trump to Clinton in Florida, the Democratic nominee would have won.

Trump was strongly applauded in the Jewish community for a number of his Israel-related policies, such as moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and securing the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab Gulf states. Those earned him only a small increase in Jewish support, however, because many of his policies and positions on other issues alienated Jewish voters. Then-vice president Joe Biden earned an estimated 68% of the Jewish vote in 2020, as compared

Hilary Clinton

to 30% for Trump. It was a close enough race that Trump victories in several contested states would have secured his re-election, although those were not states with Jewish populations large enough to have made the difference even if Jewish voters there had supported Trump in much larger numbers.

Conclusion

The history of Jewish voting in America shows a community that has been actively engaged in the political process, and in many instances has played a decisive role in the outcome of major elections, including presidential races.

In six presidential contests, the final results were so close, and the victor’s margins so narrow in major states with large Jewish populations, that even a modest shift in Jewish votes could have altered the outcome. This was true with Wilson-Hughes in 1916, Truman-Dewey in 1948, Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, Carter-Ford in 1976, Bush-Gore in 2000, and Trump-Clinton in 2016.

The Jewish vote has also proved decisive in a number of important congressional races, including significant symbolic races, such as Isacson-Propper in 1948 and Turner-Weprin in 2011, as well as the 1964 senate race in New York, and the 1992 senate contests in Pennsylvania and New York. The mere desire by one party or the other to solicit Jewish votes, because of the perception that those votes might matter, has led to a number of political achievements for friends of Israel, from the pro-Zionist planks in both party platforms in 1944 to the shipment of previously-stalled fighter jets to Israel in 1968.

The Jewish vote is potentially powerful because most Jews happen to be situated in key electoral states. The fact that Jews have for the most part most voted more for one party than the other has not diminished their influence, because there have been enough deviations from that pattern to demonstrate that many Jewish votes are potentially up for grabs. The desertion of Jimmy Carter by most Jewish voters in the presidential election of 1980 is the most graphic example of that potential.

The recent trend of extremely close presidential races makes it even more likely that Jewish voters will be poised to play an important part in choosing our nation’s chief executive in the years ahead. The number of states that could go to either party, and which have significant Jewish populations, has grown considerably. Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada have become swing states and Jewish voters there may be a decisive factor.

Despite the many advances in the science of polling, all public opinion forecasting is by its nature riddled with uncertainty. For that reason, it is impossible to know when an election may come down to a tiny number of votes, such as the 537 in Florida that determined our nation’s president in the 2000 election. That reality makes it imperative that American Jews, and all Americans, register to vote and fully participate in the democratic process.

NOTES

1 Regarding general voter participation rates, see “National Turnout Rates, 1789–Present,” https://www.electproject.org/ national-1789-present . Regarding Jewish voter participation rates, see Dr. Steven Windmueller, “The 2016 Election: Jews and Their Politics,” Institute for Contemporary Affairs, February 2, 2016 ( https://jcpa.org/article/the-2016-election-jews-and-theirpolitics/ ).

One study in the 1970s calculated that while Jews comprised 14% of the statewide population in New York, they “cast between 16% and 20% of the votes” and “at least one of every four votes in statewide Democratic primaries.” See Stephen D. Isaacs, Jews and American Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1974), p.6. A more recent study found 91% of American Jews register to vote, as compared to 84% of the general public. (“Share of People Registered to Vote in the United States in 2022, by Faith,” https://www.statista.com/statistics/713921/ share-americans-registered-vote-faith/ ). A survey by the American Enterprise Institute regarding the 2020 election campaign found that 21% of Jews had attended a campaign event, speech, or rally (as opposed to 12% of the general public); 36% of Jews had “contacted a public official” (vs. 23% of the public); and 42% expressed their political opinions on social media (vs. 34% of the public). ( https://www.aei.org/op-eds/ american-jews-are-more-politically-engaged-than-ever/ )

2 Stanley F. Chyet, “The Political Rights of the Jews in the United States: 1776-1840,” American Jewish Archives 10:1 (1958), pp.42, 67.

3 In “Jews, Lincoln, and the American Election of 1864: A Newly Discovered Broadside and Its Larger Significance,” an essay to be published in a forthcoming issue of The American Jewish Archives Journal, Jonathan D. Sarna reveals a previously unknown appeal by fourteen American Jews, urging Jewish voters to support the re-election of Abraham Lincoln in 1864. The existence of the document indicates a previously unrecognized level of Jewish engagement in that year’s presidential race, it was not the subject of significant public debate.

4 “Indiana: Gen. Grant and the Jews—The Slanderers of Mr. 17 Colfax—Growing Importance of the Chase Movement,” New York Times, [hereafter NYT], June 12, 1868, p.5; Jonathan Sarna, When General Grant Expelled the Jews (New York: Schocken, 2012), pp.70-71.

5 “Gen. Grant’s Jew Order,” NYT, October 13, 1868, p.1.

6 Sarna, pp.61-62, 65-55.

7 The earliest study of Jews and the 1868 presidential race concluded that “although undoubtedly Grant did lose some Jewish votes as a result or Order No. 11,” it is “impossible to know how many Jews voted against Grant because of Order No. 11.” See Joakim Isaacs, “Candidate Grant and the Jews,” American Jewish Archives 17:1 (April 1965), p.15.

8 When Hillquit ran for mayor of New York City in 1917, he did even worse, winning 12% of the vote. See Zosa Szajkowski, “The Jews and New York City’s Mayoralty Election of 1917,” Jewish Social Studies 32:4 (October 1970), pp.286-306.

9 Herbert F. Weisberg, “Reconsidering Jewish Presidential Voting Statistics,” Contemporary Jewry 2012, pp.5-7; David Burner, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition 1918-1932 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), pp.239-241.

10

For the Democratic platform, see: https://www.presidency.ucsb. edu/documents/1920-democratic-party-platform ; for the Republican platform, see: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ documents/republican-party-platform-1920

11 “Al Jolson Heads Harding League,” NYT, August 11, 1920, p.16; “Harding Praises Jews,” NYT, October 21, 1920, p.49.

12 “President Coolidge Declares Sympathy with Zionism,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency [hereafter JTA], January 1, 1924.

13 John M. Allswang, A House for All Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Chicago 1890-1936 (Louisville: University Press of Kentucky, 1971), pp. 206-209.

14 Sonja P. Wentling and Rafael Medoff, Herbert Hoover and the Jews: The Origins of the “Jewish Vote” and Bipartisan Support for Israel (Washington, D.C.: Wyman Insititute, 2012), pp.19-20.

15 Weisberg, p.7; Wentling and Medoff, p.20 and n.61.

16 Leon Friedman,“Election of 1944,” in History of American Presidential Elections, 1784–1968, Vol. 4, 1940–1968, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.,(New York: McGraw Hill, 1971), pp.3023, 3037; Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p.822.

17 “Palestine Plank of Republicans Lauded by Silver, Hopes Democrats Will Follow Suit,” JTA, June 29, 1944. It used the term “commonwealth,” which for practical purposes was the same as an independent, sovereign state.

18 Gordon to Early, June 2, 1944, Glenn to Niles, October 2, 1944, and W.D.H. to Daniels, undated, all in Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers, Official File 300: Democratic National Committee, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY [hereafter FDRL]; Ralph B. Levering, American Opinion and the Russian Alliance, 1939–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976), p.171

19 Norman M. Littell, My Roosevelt Years (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987), pp. 268–69.

20 Wise to Rosenblatt, July 26, 1944, File a243/133, Central Zionist Archives [hereafter CZA], Jerusalem.

21 Wise to Roosevelt, September 16, 1944, Box 68, Stephen S. Wise Papers, American Jewish Historical Society [hereafter SSW-AJHS], New York City; Minutes of the Jewish Agency Executive meeting, September 28, 1944, p.5, CZA; Wise to Weiss, November 10, 1943, Box 121, SSW-AJHS.

22 Michael J. Cohen, Truman and Israel (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), p.137; Flynn to Truman, July 30, 1946, cited in Cohen, Truman, p.142; Bruce J. Evensen, Truman, Palestine, and the Press: Shaping Conventional Wisdom at the Beginning of the Cold War (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), p.142.

23 William A. Eddy, FDR Meets Ibn Saud (New York: American Friends of the Middle East, 1954), p.37.

24 Wise to Frankfurter, October 31, 1946, Box 109, SSW-AJHS.

25 Truman to Bess, September 15, 1946, in Robert H. Ferrell, ed. Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman 1910–1959 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983), p.537; Cohen, Truman and Israel, p.143; Inverchapel to Foreign Office, August 14, 1946, FO 371/57693, Public Record Office, London [hereafter PRO]; Inverchapel to Foreign Office, August 19, 1946, CO 733/467/76021/48/3, PRO; Notes of the Acheson-Inverchapel conversation, October 3, 1946, 867N.01/10-346, National Archives, Washington, D.C. [hereafter NA]; Inverchapel to Bevin, November 22, 1946, FO 371/52571, PRO; Ben-Gurion to Silver, October 9, 1946, Weizmann Archives, Rehovot, Israel; Truman to Bess, September 15, 1946; Ferrell, Dear Bess, p. 537; Ian J. Bickerton, “President Truman’s Recognition of Israel,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 58:1 (1968), pp.193, 197.

26 A.H. Raskin, “Labor Democrats Gloomy on ‘48 Vote,” NYT, June 28, 1948, p.13.

27 Cohen, Truman and Israel, pp.215-216.

28 A.H. Raskin, “Labor Democrats Gloomy on ‘48 Vote,” NYT, June 28, 1948, p.13.

29 Minutes, American Section of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, May 27, 1948, File A123/165, Emanuel Neuman Papers, CZA; Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972), p.134.

30 “Text of the Platform As Approved for Adoption Today by the Progressive Party,” NYT, July 25, 1948, p.29.

31 “Wallace Bides U.S. Stand by Israel,” NYT, May 16, 1948, p.41; Gladwin Hill, “ ‘Oil Trust’ Blocks U.N., Wallace Says,” NYT, May 17, 1948, p.13; “Wallace Asks U.N. Control Arab Oil,” NYT, May 18, 1948, p.4.

32 “Warren Moscow, “Democrats Focus Fight on Wallace,” NYT, September 7, 1948, p.17; Max Lerner, “Follow Through on Palestine,” PM, May 18, 1948, p.10; Max Lerner, “Reflections on a War,” PM, May 27, 1948, p.10; Victor H. Bernstein, “True, Truce, It’s Wonderful,” PM, June 10, 1948, p.12; “Make Israel Legal Now,” New York Star [hereafter NYS], 24 June 1948, p.18; I.F. Stone, “Why Israel May Have to Fight,” NYS, August 2,1948, p.11; Bartley C. Crum, “The State Dept. Plot Against Israel,” NYS, October 8, 1948, p.1.

33 Cohen, Truman and Israel, p.248; “New York Press Divided over Secretary Marshall’s Support of Bernadotte’s Proposals,” JTA, September 24, 1948; “Now, Act on Israel,” NYS, October 15, 1948, p.10; “New York Press Divided over Secretary Marshall’s Support of Bernadotte’s Proposals,” JTA, September 24, 1948; “Now, Act on Israel,” NYS, October 15, 1948, p.10; “Truman Blocks Attempt of U.S. Delegation at U.N. to Back Sanctions Against Israel,” JTA, October 31, 1948; “We’re Still for Him,” NYS, October 18, 1948, p.12.

34 “Rally Combines Revival, Song Fest,” NYT, September 11, 1948, p.5; “Wallace Assails Truman on Israel,” NYT, October 29, 1948, p.6; “Wallace Talks in Garment Center And $ Bills Come Tumbling Down,” NYS, October 29, 1948, p.17; Charles Grutzner, “Wallace Assails Pledge by Truman,” October 30, 1948, p.9; “Wallace Demands U.S. Loan to Israel,” NYT, August 28, 1948, p.28; William M. Blair, “Wallace Assails Truman Red ‘Slur’,” NYT, September 25, 1948, p.3; Lawrence E. Davies, “Wallace Attacks ‘Wooing’ of Spain,” NYT, October 10, 1948, p.55.

35 Charles Grutzner, “Wallace in Tour of Brooklyn Bids 100,000 Vote for Peace,” NYT, November 1, 1948, p.1; Gerald Sorin, The Nurturing Neighbohood: The Brownsville Boys’ Club and Jewish Community in Urban America, 1940-1990 (New York: New York University Press, 1992), p.14; Warren Moscow, “Truman in Strongest Plea for Israel Backs Boundaries in First U.N. Plan; Crowds in City Streets Welcome Him,” NYT, October 29, 1948, p.1; John K. Weiss, “Truman Reassures N.Y. of Firm Israel Stand,” NYS, October 29, 1948, p.1.

36 Harry S. Truman, Years of Trial and Hope (New York: Doubleday, 1956), p.221.

37 In two of Manhattan’s three most heavily-Jewish neighborhoods, Wallace finished second to Truman, and in the third he nearly tied Dewey. In the 4th Assembly District, encompassing the Upper West Side-Central Park West area, Wallace won 22.8% of the vote (Dewey received 14.7%). In the 14th Assembly District, covering the Lower East Side, Wallace captured 28.3% (Dewey got just 11.9%). And in the 16th (the Central Park-Upper East Side-lower Harlem area), Wallace finished with 21.3% to Dewey’s 23.7%.

In the Bronx, in the heavily-Jewish 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th districts (covering the Grand Concourse, Pelham Parkway, Mosholu Avenue, and Co-op City), Wallace’s level of support ranged from 18.5 to 27.3%. In four of the six areas, he won 23.6% or more. And he finished ahead of Dewey in five out of six.

The results in Brooklyn’s seven most Jewish neighborhoods were equally striking. In four of them, he won between 15% and 20%. In the 19th Assembly District (Boro Park-Kensington), Wallace won 20.6%, just shy of Dewey’s 21.3%. In the 24th (Coney Island-Sea Gate), Wallace captured 27.8%, more than twice Dewey’s total. And in the 23rd (Brownsville), Wallace’s 28.8% share was more than three times that of Dewey.

38 Lawrence Fuchs, in “American Jews and the Presidential Vote,” American Political Science Review 49:2 (June 1955), p.387, noted that “in addition to Wallace’s support among blue-collar Jewish immigrants, he also “won the votes of many well educated upper-middle class Jews who had heretofore voted for Franklin Roosevelt.” Also see Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Prophet in Politics: Henry A. Wallace and the War Years, 1940-1965 (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1970), p.195.

According to John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), p.101, “[T]hree-fourths of [Wallace’s] vote [came] primarily from the Negro and Jewish communities,” Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier reported: “With the exception of seven precincts in the Tampa area, [Wallace’s] success was entirely in black and Jewish districts in New York and California.”

Samuel Lubell (The Future of American Politics [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952], pp.206-208), writing soon after the 1948 election, noted that while Truman won “the majority of Jewish voters,” there were substantial numbers of Jewish votes for Wallace and, in places such as the Jewish neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, for Dewey.

39 Akzin to Silver, September 1, 1948, pp.1, 4, File: Silver Correspondence, Hyman P. Schulson Papers, New York Public Library, New York City.

40 Saul Brenner, “Patterns of Jewish-Catholic Democratic Voting and the 1960 Presidential Vote,” Jewish Social Studies 26:3 (July 1964), pp.176-177.

41 “New York Candidates for Senate Pledge Support for Israel’s Security,” JTA, September 25, 1964.

42 “Keating Urges Immediate U.S. Steps to Reaffirm Support for Israel,” JTA, October 6, 1964.

43 Homer Bigart, “Kennedy Worried Over Jewish Vote; Fears Defections to Keating in the City May Offset His Popularity Upstate,” NYT, October 1, 1964, pp.1, 27.

44 Homer Bigart, “Kennedy Worried Over Jewish Vote; Fears Defections to Keating in the City May Offset His Popularity Upstate,” NYT, October 1, 1964, pp.1, 27; “Keating and Kennedy Wooing N.Y. Jewish Voters in Elections to Senate,” JTA, September 22, 1964; “Kennedy Appeals to Jews in Election Drive; Pledges to Aid Israel,” JTA, September 24, 1964; “Robert F. Kennedy Advocates Strong Pro-Israel Stand by U.S.A.,” JTA, October 7, 1964; R. W. Apple, Jr., “Kennedy Edge 6-5,” NYT, November 4, 1965, pp.1, 27.

45 William Safire, Before the Fall: An Inside View of the PreWatergate White House (New York: Doubleday, 1975), p.564; Peter Golden, Quiet Diplomat: A Biography of Max M. Fisher (New York: Cornwall Books, 1992), pp.164-165.

46 “Nixon Says United States Should Aid Israel to Establish Military Superiority,” JTA, September 10, 1968; “The Choice Is Yours…” (advertisement), Jewish Press, October 25, 1968, p.15; “Senator Javits Wants You to Join Him in Voting for Dick Nixon” (advertisement), Jewish Press, November 1, 1968, p.9; Untitled advertisement, Jewish Press, November 1, 1968, p.15; “Humphrey and the Riots,” Jewish Press, November 1, 1968, p.16; “Jews Not As Jews In New Vote Stance,” Jewish Post and Opinion [hereafter JPO], November 8, 1968, p.13.

47 “Gallup Poll Finds Many Traditionally Democratic Voting Groups are Switching to Nixon,” NYT, October 2, 1968, p.25; “Jewish Shift to Nixon,” JPO, October 18, 1968, p.6.

48 “Eshkol, Here, Hopes to Obtain U.S. Military Aid,” NYT, January 5, 1968, p.6; “Eshkol Hints on Arrival to See Johnson He Would Talk About U.S. Phantom Jets; for Israel,” JTA, January 5, 1968; “Warns Coordinated Action Needed to Bar ‘Erosion’ of U.S. Mideast Policy,” JTA, January 22, 1968; I.L. Kenen, Israel’s Defense Line: Her Friends and Foes in Washington (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1981), pp.218–19; “Presidents’ Conference Asks Johnson for Immediate Action on Phantoms for Israel,” JTA, September 12, 1968.

49 Richard Bergholz, “Precinct Tallies Show How Bradley Lost,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1969, pp.1, 18; Max Baumgarten, “In Search of Fairfax: The 1969 Mayoral Election,” https://scalar. usc.edu/hc/fairmax-project/the-1969-mayoral-election

50 Donald Janson, “Rizzo Wins Race in Philadelphia,” New York Times, November 3, 1971, p.1; Tom Fox, “The Sabra of South Phila.,” Philadelphia Daily News, November 23, 1970, p.3.

Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, in their book, Beyond the Melting Pot, saw a division among Jewish voters along socioeconomic lines: “College-educated and professional Jews may still resist the appeal of conservative issues and candidates . . . but lower-middle class and working-class Jews find conservative candidates more and more attractive.” [Allen S. Maller, “Class Factors in the Jewish Vote,” Jewish Social Studies 39:1–2 (Winter-Spring 1977), pp.159–62; Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press and Harvard University Press, 1963), p.162.]

51 C. Daniel Chill, “Changing Jewish Voting Patterns, Jewish Life 37:1 (September- October 1969), pp.14–21.

52 Ibid.

53

54

Jeffrey S. Gurock, Jews in Gotham: New York Jews in a Changing City (New York: New York University Press, 2015) p.146.

Jeffrey S. Gurock, Orthodox Jews in America, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), p.222; Frank Lynn, “Rooney Beats Lowenstein in Close Primary Runoff,” NYT, September 20, 1972, pp.1, 35; Ari L. Goldman, “Hasidim Flexing Political Muscle,” NYT, October 8, 1972, p.135.

55 “The Battle for the Democratic Party,” Time, July 17, 1972; Glazer and Himmelfarb, “McGovern and the Jews,” p.43.

56 “Wooing the Jewish Vote,” Newsweek, August 21, 1972, p.16.

57 Evans and Novak, “Jewish Voters: A Switch?,” New York Post, June 21, 1972, p.17.

58 Weisberg, p.13.

59

Milton Himmelfarb and Howard W. Yagerman, Preliminary Report on Presidential Voting by Jews in 1972. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1972, pp.2–3.

60 Frank Lynn, “Moynihan Edges Out Mrs. Abzug; Buckley Also Victory in Primary; Badillo, Mrs. Chisholm Winners,” NYT, September 15, 1976, p.1; Edward I. Koch, “The World According to Koch,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, February 5, 1984, p.38; Bella Abzug (letter), “Bella Abzug on Mayor Koch” (letter), New York Times Sunday Magazine, April 15, 1984, p.114; Edward I. Koch, “A Response from Mayor Koch” (Letter), New York Times Sunday Magazine, June 3, 1984, p.112; Letter by Jack Newfield, The Village Voice, September 28, 1972, p.5.

61 “Jewish Vote in New York Primaries,” JTA, September 16, 1976; Maurice Carroll, “Moynihan Defeats Buckley for New York Senate Seat,” NYT, November 3, 1976.

62 Weisberg, p.13.

63 Flora Lewis, “Carter, at Meeting with Syrian, Calls for Palestinian ‘Homeland’, NYT, May 10, 1977, p.1; Wolf Blitzer, “Brzezinski, Kalb Differ on Carter-U.S. Jewish Ties,” Jerusalem Post, August 18, 1977, p.1; William Safire, “Selling Out Israel,” NYT, October 6, 1977, p.27; Charles Mohr, “Carter Makes Plea to Jews on Mideast,” NYT, November 3, 1977, pp.1,5; Terence Smith, “Carter Leads a Drive to Mollify Jewish Opponents of Arms Deal,” NYT, May 17, 1978, pp.1,4; Arnaud de Borchgrave and Michael Ledeen, “Qaddafi, Arafat, and Billy Carter,” The New Republic, November 1, 1980, pp.19-21.

64 “Kennedy Calls for Unequivocal U.S. Support for Israel; Raps U.S. Flirtation with the PLO,” JTA, January 29, 1980; “Kennedy Again Blasts Carter for ‘Flirtation’ with PLO,” JTA, February 26, 1980; “Kennedy’s Upset Victory over Carter Aided by Major Role of Jewish Voters,” March 27, 1980; E.J.Dionne Jr., “Jews Are Wavering on Democratic Ties,” NYT, July 24, 1980, p.17.

65 “Carter, Kennedy Groups Battle over Change in Democratic Platform Jerusalem Plank,” JTA, June 24, 1980, “Carter, Kennedy Supporters Reach Compromise on Jerusalem Plank,” JTA, June 25, 1980.

66 Weisberg, p.13. Studies by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the National [Republican] Jewish Coalition calculated that in New York City, Reagan received 41% -43% of Jewish votes. See Walter Ruby, ‘Network Poll Findings Are Disputed by JCRC, Coalition,” Jewish World of Long Island, November 16, 1984, p.5.

67 Weisberg, p.13.

68 Marianne Goldstein, Cathy Burke, and Don Broderick, “Baker’s 4-Letter Slam at U.S. Jews,” New York Post, March 6, 1992, p.5.

69 Jill Porter, “Israel a Major Factor to Yeakel Supporters,” Philadelphia Daily News, May 27, 1992, p.11; Jill Porter, “The Issue of Israel a Hurdle for Yeakel,” Philadelphia Daily News, June 12, 1992, p.11; Nathan Gorenstein, “She Gets Heat, He, Warmth,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 15, 1992, pp.1,4.

70 Nathan Gorenstein, “Specter’s Strategy Teaks Him Back to U.S. Senate,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 5, 1992, p.16.

71 Alessandra Stanley, “D’Amato: Combining Money, Attacks and Foe’s Blunders,” NYT, November 5, 1992, pp.1, 14; Stewart Ain, “Heavy Jewish Vote Helped Clinton to Victory,” New York Jewish Week, November 6-12, 1992, pp.1, 22.

72 “The President’s Speech in Cairo: A New Beginning,” https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/foreign-policy/ presidents-speech-cairo-a-new-beginning

73 Adam Dickter, “Turner Targeted Americans In Israel,” New York Jewish Week, September 28, 2011, p.28.

This study was commissioned by Teach Coalition, a project of the Orthodox Union that advocates for government funding and resources for yeshivas and Jewish day schools.

In those efforts, over the last decade, Teach has become the grassroots advocacy organization of Jewish communities across the country, giving voice to Jewish causes and concerns. Now, at time of exceptional concern and urgency for Jewish Americans, Teach has harnessed that voice, galvanizing the Jewish community into a potent political force through voting efforts.

This includes voter initiatives across New Jersey, New York, California, Florida and Pennsylvania — which have yielded unprecedented success, thanks to a strategy rooted in precision and an unwavering dedication to our values. Teach now plans to build on this work, mobilizing voters across states and regions to be a force for change for Jews in this country.

Jewish Voters Action Network (JVAN) is a 501(c)4 social-welfare organization dedicated to combatting antisemitism by empowering Jewish voters. JVAN works to mobilize Jewish communities to vote in city, state and federal elections to ensure that the elected officials representing the community to help ensure that those elected will be our advocates in the halls of government.

Learn more and get involved with our voting efforts: jewishvotersactionnetwork.org

Rafael Medoff

Dr. Rafael Medoff, a historian of American Jewry, is the author of more than twenty books, and hundreds of essays, on Jewish history, Zionism, and the Holocaust, including the award-winning textbook, Jewish Americans and Political Participation. He has taught at Ohio State University, Purchase College of the State University of New York, Yeshiva University, and elsewhere, and served as associate editor of the scholarly journal American Jewish History.