Recently I posted about the overwhelming support for the Democrats from Jewish, Asian and young voters this year [1]. I was contacted by the Republican Jewish Coalition [2] who wanted to claim a much higher Republican vote from Jews (based on their own exit polls) than was claimed by the National Jewish Democratic Council claimed (based on independent exit polls). I reported both polls also added a note from the Philadelphia Jewish Voice newspaper indicating that while there are many Jews running for office or elected to office as Democrats, there are very few Jewish Republicans in office or running for office.

The National Jewish Democratic Council and Republican Jewish Coalition differ on their claims of what percentage of the Jewish vote went Democrat this year, but they are both partisan organizations and therefore biased. I can now add that the non-partisan, unbiased American Jewish Committee's [3] analysis of the 2006 election takes the same numbers that the National Jewish Democratic Council does:

If Lieberman’s nominally independent candidacy tested (and largely won) the party loyalty of Jewish Democrats, the community was less conflicted in other contests. In fact, exit polls showed Jewish voters overwhelmingly returning to form in this election – as reliable supporters of Democratic candidates. Over the years, Republican fortunes have risen and fallen among Jewish voters; in his 2004 re-election, President Bush was reported to have
amassed support from a higher-than-average 24 percent of Jewish voters (although other estimates post a lower figure), a pick-up of some 5 points from 2000. In this year’s Congressional contests, exit polls showed just 12 percent of Jews supporting Republican candidates, with 87 percent saying they had voted Democratic.

The lopsided exit polls of 2006 are generally consistent with the latest data on American Jews’ political affiliation. The American Jewish Committee’s “annual survey of American
Jewish opinion,” released last month, found the community breaking 54 percent Democratic, 15 percent Republican, and 29 percent independent (with the rest declining to answer).

The AJC adds, however, one omen for the future that Democrats may want to pay attention to:

A bright spot for the GOP – and confirmation that the significant investments in Jewish outreach made by both parties in recent years address more fluid markets than the overall data suggest – is that while New Deal Jews over the age of 60 are five times more likely to identify as Democrats than Republicans, their children and grandchildren under the age of 40 break just two-to-one Democratic. If the adage that people tend to grow more conservative as they age applies equally to Jewish voters, a politically more competitive future awaits. This trend may be reinforced by the continuing growth of the Orthodox community – the most politically conservative voting bloc – as a component of the American Jewish population; the latest AJC survey showed Democrats with a relatively narrow 4-3 advantage over Republicans in that subgroup (not counting the 25 percent who are independent or nonresponsive), while enjoying roughly 4-1 margins in the community’s other branches.

I also found the AJC's general analysis of the election to be interesting:

For President Bush, while graciously advising a next-day press conference that he was partly to blame for the Republicans’ “thumping,” the deciding factor was Congressional ethics – bolstered by a “disciplined” Democratic campaign. For Representative Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, the Democratic Minority Leader turned House Speaker-in-waiting in last week’s balloting, voters ended the Republicans’ 12 years of House rule because they wanted a “new direction” – in the way a scandal-tainted Congress conducts its business, for sure, but first of all in the nation’s increasingly unpopular military engagement in Iraq. For Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat poised to be Majority Leader of a 51-49 Senate, voters “demanded change” – beginning with Iraq.

To some in the news media, the message of the midterm elections – in which Democrats picked up as many as 30 House seats and, through an unlikely run of decisive and razor-thin victories, captured narrow control of the Senate – was that unimpressive administration and Congressional records since 2004, combined with a fatigue factor after six years of mostly unchallenged GOP control, had simply exhausted voter sympathy, beyond the point at which even hard-edged partisan appeals could corral the once-faithful back into line.

But whether the election was about President Bush, or the Iraq war, or the DeLay and Abramoff (and Cunningham, Ney, Foley, etc.) scandals, or the fumbled recovery from Hurricane Katrina, or the summer/fall spike in gasoline prices, or public boredom with the same old faces on the TV news – or some combination of all the above – the impact of the November 7 vote will be dramatic: Both houses of Congress will be under the control of a party that on key issues of domestic and international policy embraces views fundamentally opposed to those of the President, and in which appeals to bipartisanship – such as the one issued by the President in his press conference – ring hollow after years of harshly enforced irrelevance.

The great challenges to which Bush pointed that demand a joint administration-Congressional response, including energy independence and immigration reform and the ongoing terrorist threat, are going to be confronted in the coming two years in an atmosphere of the most strained, even absent, bipartisanship; reaching across the aisle is a nearly extinct reflex these days on Capitol Hill.

It sure seems to me that the AJC lingers over the failings (both in policy and morality) of the Republicans in their analysis.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

[4] | [5] | [6] | [7] | [8] | [9]