Five percent of the vote is more than the difference that US presidential election candidates usually use to win Florida. For decades, the 29 electors have been awarded the winner here with significantly smaller intervals; most recently in 2016 with less than one percent. Which explains why Donald Trump has targeted the 650,000 or so Jewish voters in the sunny state.
Although more Jews live in the Democratic-dominated states of New York and California, according to Ira Sheskin of the University of Miami’s Jewish Demography Project, “nowhere more political influence” than in the “Swing State” of Florida. And they choose. 95 percent have registered to vote, half of them are over 65.
Disloyalty More than 80 percent of them live in southern Florida, a significant number in the neighborhood of the Mar-a-Lago presidential mansion in Palm Beach. In Trump’s mind, as he once complained, Jews behave “disloyal” to their beliefs when they vote for Democrats. Because no president has “done so much for Israel” as he.
Only six percent of American Jews consider Israel to be particularly important.
He overlooks the fact that most voters of the Jewish faith define themselves primarily as Americans who care about Israel as much as US Catholics care about Rome. For the majority, as the Jewish Electorate Institute notes, Middle East politics are far behind the issues of pandemic crisis management, the economy and health care. Only six percent consider the subject of Israel to be particularly important.
For the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Trump received mainly applause from evangelical Christians, who also consider the so-called “Abraham Agreement” between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to be more important than the Jewish voters. The president was also frustrated that his all too obvious closeness to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no effect on the Jewish electorate.
jstreet In 2019, the polling institute Pew found that 42 percent of US Jews do not approve of Trump’s offensive partisanship for Israel. That US Jews »support a right-wing US Middle East policy« is a »total myth«, according to the president of the liberal Jewish organization »JStreet«, Jeremy Ben-Ami.
Currently, Trump only finds significant support from Orthodox Jews. But they only make up ten percent of US Jews. Too little to score a deciding vote. The 50 million dollars with which the Jewish billionaire Sheldon G. Adelson supports Trump does not change that.
American Jews traditionally vote for democrats who are closer to them socio-politically.
American Jews traditionally vote for democrats who are closer to them socio-politically. Almost 100 years ago, more than 70 percent voted for the defeated Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith, 82 percent voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. And the Jewish votes for Democrats rose to over 90 percent in the 1940s.
Consolidation Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is doing his part to keep it that way. He jumped $ 100 million for Joe Biden in Florida. Part of this goes towards consolidating the Jewish votes.
What weighs heavier there is what Trump leaves behind as a domestic political legacy: like a mortgage, the surge in anti-Semitism during his term in office weighs on the president. According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic attacks rose 56 percent in 2019 compared to the previous year. Two-thirds of US Jews say they feel less secure under the president, who is being celebrated by his media supporters as “the chosen one” and “king of Israel” than they did a decade ago.
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