In 2024, The Question Will Be "The Anti-Israel Vote," Not "The Jewish Vote" (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

The 2024 presidential election is less than a year away.

And that means the pundits will be discussing "the Jewish vote." That is not to say there will be much to talk about. Jews, as a group, vote for Democrats. On top of that, Biden is perceived as a friend of Israel and the Jewish community. And on top of that, Biden's support for Israel against Hamas following the massacre on October 7 has only cemented the Jewish support for him.

After all, Israel is important to American Jews.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) regularly polls the Jewish community. Their poll in 2020 asked about the importance of Israel to Jewish identity:

Since 2020 was an election year, the AJC also asked about what issues were important to the Jewish community:

Despite the importance that Jews said Israel holds for their Jewish identity, Israel was not rated as one of the top 6 issues in the upcoming election.

Going further back, this attitude is consistent. In their 2007 poll, the AJC asked:

And yet

The fact that Jews consistently say that Israel is important to them and to their Jewish identity does not seem to correlate with how they vote on election day. So, for example, when he ran for president, Obama had no problem getting the Jewish vote, despite questions about whether he was a friend of Israel:

President Obama's support among Jewish voters has remained relatively steady from 2008, exit polls show.

National exit polls released Tuesday show Obama capturing 70 percent of the Jewish vote, versus 30 percent for Mitt Romney.

In 2008, exit polls showed him beating John McCain 78 percent to 21 percent. The Solomon Project estimated that his actual 2008 vote share among Jewish Americans was actually closer to 74 percent — taking into account the small sample size. [emphasis added]

Getting back to 2023, how do those surveys of the Jewish vote contrast with the growing anti-Israel attitude reflected in the recent poll by The New York Times of opinions of Biden's handling of the situation in Gaza?

According to The New York Times, "Poll Finds Wide Disapproval of Biden on Gaza, and Little Room to Shift Gears":

Voters broadly disapprove of the way President Biden is handling the bloody strife between Israelis and Palestinians, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found, with younger Americans far more critical than older voters of both Israel’s conduct and of the administration’s response to the war in Gaza.

The next paragraph goes on to clarify that "nearly as many Americans want Israel to continue its military campaign as want it to stop now to avoid further civilian casualties." 

Here are the numbers:

Given a choice between two courses of action, a narrow plurality of voters, 44 percent, said Israel should stop its military campaign to protect against civilian casualties, already totaling nearly 20,000 people killed, according to Gaza health authorities. A similar number, 39 percent, advised the opposite course: Israel should continue its military campaign even if it means civilian casualties in Gaza mount. [emphasis added]

These numbers bear out the New York Times claim that the issue is divisive.

But Jim Geraghty of The National Review disagrees. He writes The ‘New York Times’ Misreads Its Own Poll. Geraghty questions just how much the issue of Israel's war with Hamas actually matters. Pointing to the full data collected from the poll, he notes that in response to the open-ended question "What do you think is the MOST important problem facing the country today?" 1% of registered voters responded "The Middle East/Israel/Palestinians" and 3% of those aged 18-29 gave that answer.

Other issues, like the economy and immigration, were more important -- both to registered voters and to 18-19-year-olds.

The data from The New York Times own poll seem to support Geraghty's interpretation that:

U.S. policy regarding the Israeli war against Hamas plays an extremely minor role in voters’ frustration with Biden...If the Israeli war against Hamas ended tomorrow, Biden’s numbers would still be lousy.

If Geraghty is right, we have a similar phenomenon between the Jewish vote on the one hand and the anti-Israel vote on the other. Despite the depth of feeling expressed by both, that feeling does not seem to translate into actual votes at the ballot box. 

Jews respond that Israel is important to their sense of identity, but when it comes time to vote, they will vote on the issues. Those 18-19-year-olds will protest in the street against Israel, but issues like the economy hit much closer to home.

But is it that simple?

The AJC polls indicate American Jews, overall, draw a line between their connection with Israel and being civic-minded Americans. They vote on the issues that affect Americans. 

The anti-Israel protestors, who generally fall within the 18-29-year-old range appear to be a small fraction of the electorate and may not be registered to vote or even interested. But the people showing up at the protests are not civic-minded. They are loud and express themselves by closing traffic on bridges and occupying buildings. 

If they decide that opposing Biden and voting him out of office is another expression of their protest, the Democratic party may have something to worry about. As it is, Tlaib in Michigan is threatening “We will remember in 2024.” and a poll shows Biden polling poorly about Arab Americans. If the protestors are organized beyond Michigan, who is to say that other states could not be affected as well?

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