In '24 Trump Can Win With Jewish-Americans

Ari Fleischer, press secretary for President George W. Bush between 2001 and 2003, recently predicted that Donald Trump will win 40% of the Jewish-American vote in November, a significant increase from the 30% earned by both Mitt Romney in 2012 and the former president in 2020.

In the 19 presidential elections since 1948, the Republican candidate with the highest share of the Jewish vote was incumbent Dwight Eisenhower’s 40% in 1956.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan got 39%, in crushing the  incompetent Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, who received 45% of my coreligionists’ votes, while third-party candidate John Anderson took 15%.

Moreover, in a recent opinion article in The New York Post, Douglas Schoen, the veteran Democratic pollster-campaign adviser, noted that the “strategically located Jewish vote is moving away from Biden.”

In 2020, Biden defeated President Trump, with 306 electoral votes (EVs) to 232. But currently, after the House of Representatives decennial reapportionment, states won by Biden dropped to 303 EVs and Trump’s total increased to 235.

Thus, to reach 270 EVs, Trump needs only to flip Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, each of which he lost by a miniscule 10,000 to 21,000 votes, and which have a combined 37 EVs.

Significantly, in 2022, Georgia was home to 141,000 Jewish Americans; Arizona had 124,000; and Wisconsin, 33,000.

The EVs and Jewish populations of other states, where Biden squeaked-out a victory four years ago but Trump can reverse this year, are Pennsylvania, 19 EVs and 434,000; Michigan, 15 EVs and 88,000; and Nevada, 6 EVs and 80,000.

By contrast, President Biden isn’t positioned to flip any of the 25 states Trump captured in 2020, as the only nail-biter was North Carolina (16 EVs this year), which he won by just 75,000 votes. An April 3 Wall Street Journal poll has the former president leading in the Tar Heel State 49% to 43%.

However, neither Fleischer nor Schoen cited a New York Post article in late February 2024 that, according to a Siena College poll, a “staggering” 53% of registered Jewish voters in New York state plan to vote for Trump and 43% for Biden.

Additionally, the article quotes Sam Markstein, national political director for the Republican Jewish Coalition, that Republican challenger Lee Zeldin received 46% of the Jewish vote in the 2022 election in losing, 53% to 47%, to incumbent dystopian Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.

That same year, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was overwhelmingly re-elected and secured 45% of the Jewish vote, according to Markstein.

A historic development among Jewish Americans, since Reagan’s and George H.W. Bush’s 1980 blowout (489 EVs), is our dispersion from a humongous 48%, in a total population of 5.92 million, in New York (36%), Pennsylvania (7%) and Illinois (5%).

But in 2022, New York (24%), Pennsylvania (6%) and Illinois (4%) accounted for 34% of 7.39 million Jewish Americans.

New York’s Jewish population two years ago was 1,786,000, which is a massive decline of 355,000 from the 2,141,000 in 1980.

The combined EVs of New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania plunged from 94 in 1980 to 66 this year.

The EVs and Jewish populations in 2022 of other large states, which Biden won handily in 2020 but are in play this year, are New Jersey, 14 EVs and 626,000; Virginia, 13 EVs and 151,000; and Colorado, 10 EVs and 98,000.

In 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governorship of Virginia over former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe; and in New Jersey, Republican Jack Ciattarelli, nearly unseated the Democratic incumbent Phil Murphy, losing 51% to 48%.

With a growing group of Democratic politicians demagogically attacking Israel, while ignoring the metastasizing antisemitism in their party and jurisdictions, Trump is poised to attract pathbreaking support from Jewish voters.

And a decisive victory by Trump will boost Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate and House, which could produce a fabulous trifecta for the party.

But the former president should stop attacking liberal Jews who will vote for Biden and/or Democratic Congressional candidates in the upcoming elections.

Since Biden and Democrats are increasingly desperate, Trump should quietly savor their well-deserved comeuppance, and not throw them any life preservers.

In the 1992 presidential election, incumbent Republican George H.W. Bush attracted only 11% of the votes of Jewish American, down sharply from a hefty 35% in 1988.

Bush and James Baker III, his Secretary of State and then chief of staff, were tone-deaf to the interests of Jewish Americans, whose support for the president in the voting booths plunged by an unprecedented 69%.

Finally, Judge Jonah Goldstein (1886-1967), the losing Republican candidate in the New York mayoral election in 1945, famously quipped that “Jewish Americans believe in three velten [Yiddish for ‘worlds’]. Di velt [this world], yene velt [world to come] and Roosevelt.”

In four presidential victories between 1932 and 1944, FDR averaged 87% of the Jewish vote.

With an indomitable dose of self-control until Nov. 5, 2024, former President Donald Trump can end the blind faith that too many Jewish Americans have in Democratic presidents and their golden, forked tongues.