The Jewish Vote Can be Decisive in Close Races

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Can the Jewish vote be decisive in swing states? Nathan Guttman has argued that it can't in an article for the July/August issue of Moment Magazine. But does this claim survive scrutiny?

In the article, Nathan Guttman "debunks" five myths of the Jewish vote in U.S. Presidential elections:

Myth: Polling Jewish voters can predict how Jews will vote.

Myth: Jews are becoming increasingly Republican.

Myth: Jews can tip a swing state.

Myth: Jewish money bankrolls election campaigns.

Myth: Israel is a deciding factor for Jewish voters.

We’ll dedicate this post to myth three, both because the number three is of special significance in Judaism and because numbers one, two, and five don’t really matter if the Jewish vote can’t tip swing states.

If the Jewish vote can’t tip swing states, then the Jewish vote amounts to very little importance.  Jews account for approximately two percent of the U.S. population, and about four percent of the electorate, a number that is too small to be of great significance to the popular vote.

But then there are Jew-heavy states.  In a previous article (for em>Haaretz<), Guttman names New York, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Florida as homes to large Jewish populations.  For a slightly different list, Anat Hakim, writing for the em>Los Angeles Times<, identifies “nine states where the size of the Jewish population was larger than the size of victory for either President Bush or Sen. John Kerry in 2004:  Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

To prove that Jews can tip swing states, it needs to be shown that Jews can tip one of these states.  Let’s choose Florida.  Amusingly, it was Guttman himself who, in a 2003 article, pointed out the importance of the Floridian Jewish vote:

There remains only Florida, the Democrats’ trauma in the 2000 elections, where it is estimated that Bush succeeded in the last elections in enlisting 35 percent of the Jewish voters and in winning, after a lengthy legal wrangle, in the state and in the country as a whole.  Florida is a key state in the 2004 elections, and the forecast is that Bush will have to succeed there [if] he is to win; therefore the elderly Jewish voters who live in the coastal areas of the state are important to him.

If the Jewish vote in Florida had kept to the nationwide Jewish average (79 percent, Gore; 21 percent, Bush) then Gore would have easily won Florida.  As noted in a 2008 Slate article on the subject, “In Florida, Jews make up around 5 percent of the voting population – more than enough to swing a close race. (If all the South Florida Jewish voters who intended to support Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2000 had actually cast their votes properly, Gore would have won.)”

This phenomenon is not specific to Florida in 2000.  Jews make up approximately 3 percent of the voting population of Pennsylvania, a state that John Kerry won in 2004 by fewer than 200,000 votes.  In the same election, George W. Bush beat Kerry in Florida by fewer than 400,000 votes.  As Guttman concedes in his Moment article, “Ohio is also a state where Jewish voters could play a role in a close race.”

The behavior of the Obama campaign should also caution against Guttman’s assertion that the Jewish vote is of limited importance.  Since the President’s 1967 border speech in the spring, and especially in recent weeks, the president’s campaign team has ramped up its Jewish outreach efforts.  Conspicuous among these efforts is the recruitment of Alan Solow, former head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, to stump for Obama.  The campaign clearly wants something from American Jews -- be it their votes, their money, or both.

Guttman is right to say that “the vast majority of Jewish voters vote in states that aren’t really in play, like New York and California, and their vote will hardly be noticed.”  But the Jewish vote should not be dismissed entirely.  Jews can play a role in close races in key states, and, if polls can be believed, 2012 will be a close race.  Rest assured that President Obama will do everything in his power to make sure that he doesn’t lose this close race because of a few old Jewish voters in Florida.