Charles Mahtesian, Politico – Do Republicans really have a shot at winning a sizable share of the Jewish vote in November?
From the beginning of the GOP presidential primary season to Mitt Romney’s upcoming visit to Israel, Republicans have acted that way, convinced that unease over Obama’s policy toward Israel presents a unique opportunity to capture a significant portion of a historically Democratic constituency.
While a September 2011 New York congressional special election helped fuel those expectations, a comprehensive new report from the Solomon Project, a nonpartisan group that works to educate the American Jewish community about its history of civic involvement, underscores just how difficult the task will be for Republicans.
The report, first obtained by POLITICO, offers an in-depth review of Jewish American voting behavior from 1972 through 2008 that downplays the notion that the Jewish vote is in play. Instead, it points to the remarkable consistency in presidential preferences since 1984.
In fact, since 1992 Jewish support for Democratic presidential candidates has increased compared to prior decades, with no evidence of significant gains for Republicans.
At the congressional level, the report concludes, the Jewish vote for Democrats has never dropped below 70 percent.
Co-authored by Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, DCCC director of targeting Aaron Strauss and Kenneth Wald, a University of Florida professor who contributed to the book “Jews in American Politics,” the study is designed to push back against the notion that American Jews are beginning to switch their allegiance to the Republican Party.
The authors identify two distinct eras of Jewish presidential voting – from 1972 through 1988, when Republican candidates for president attracted between 31 percent and 37 percent of the Jewish vote, and from 1992 through 2008, when the GOP share dropped to between 15 percent and 23 percent.
Democratic congressional candidates have received an even greater share of the Jewish vote – ranging from 71 percent to 80 percent of the two-party vote between 1976 and 2000 and from 71 percent to 88 percent since 2002.
Among the other bullet points from the study: