(JNS) U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide victory on Tuesday points to significant gains for the Republican among New York-area Jewish voters.
The Fox News exit poll of 4,235 New Yorkers showed that among the 8% of respondents who identified as Jewish, 46% backed the former president over Vice President Kamala Harris, who received the other 54%. In the same exit poll in 2020, Trump garnered 37% of the state’s Jewish vote, compared to President Joe Biden’s 63%.
Yesterday’s polling results appear to be borne out in some of New York’s county-level voting. In Rockland County, which has the largest per capita Jewish population of any U.S. county, Trump beat Harris 56% to 44%, an eight percentage-point swing from 2020, when Biden won more than half of the vote.
In Brooklyn, with its large Orthodox population, Trump picked up six percentage points over his 2020 performance, likely also helped by massive gains among Hispanic voters. Nationally, Hispanics swung towards Trump by 25 points, one of the largest shifts among any demographic group compared to 2020, per Edison Research’s national election pool exit poll.
Rabbi Yeruchim Silber, director of government relations at Agudath Israel of America, told JNS that Agudah didn’t conduct exit polling, but turnout was at “record levels” in the areas in which it operates.
“Israel was certainly an issue of concern to the Orthodox community, but more than that was the exponential rise in antisemitism that really fueled voters’ passion,” Silber said. “People simply don’t feel as safe anymore.”
He added that the Jewish vote “played a significant role in at least four of the contested congressional seats, with a parade of office seekers as well as congressional leadership from both parties paying visits to major rabbis looking for their endorsements.”
“In a historic first, the New York State legislature will now have six yarmulke wearing members, something that would have been unheard of years ago,” he added.
Trump’s vote tally ultimately made New York, where Harris won by 11 percentage points, a more closely-contested race than Florida, which Trump won by 13 points.
The heightened enthusiasm for Trump in a deep-blue state did not necessarily translate to victories down ballot for Republicans who picked up seats in the 2022 midterms.
In some of the state’s most closely-contested House races, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) cruised to victory over former representative Mondaire Jones in the 17th Congressional District, but Rep. Mike Molinaro (R-N.Y.) narrowly lost his seat in the 19th Congressional District. The race for New York’s 4th Congressional District remains too close to call on Wednesday, though Democrat Laura Gillen maintains a 6,000 vote lead over the Republican incumbent.
Trump’s gains among New York Jewish voters also contrasts with a more mixed picture nationwide.
Edison Research’s exit poll, used by the main networks except Fox, suggested that only 21% of U.S. Jews voted for Trump—a performance that would be worse than he had in 2020, according to most polls.
Nationally, Fox’s poll had Trump winning 32% of the Jewish vote—a higher result than the Edison Research finding but only a modest increase in the 30% of Jewish support that Fox found in 2020. Fox also had Trump flat among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania at 26% in both 2020 and 2024, and at 21% of the Jewish vote in California.
Mark Mellman, president of Democratic Majority for Israel, cautioned against reading into contradictory exit polling about the Jewish vote.
“The only thing we know about the Jewish vote is that Kamala Harris got a substantial portion of it,” Mellman told JNS. “Whether that was with 66% or 79%, those are both overwhelming numbers, but there’s a pretty big difference between them.”
David May, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 created a permission structure for more Jewish voters to fill in their ballots for Trump.
“The radical anti-Zionism that bleeds into antisemitism convinced many Jewish voters that there is an existential threat to Israel and Jews in America,” May said. “The Democratic Party did not do nearly enough to convince many Jews that it would stand up to the radicals in its camp.”
Steven Windmueller, professor emeritus of Jewish communal studies at Hebrew Union College, told JNS that it is likely that many Jewish voters split their tickets, voting for Trump for president but embracing Democratic candidates down ballot.
“I am of the mind that among younger Jews, who opposed the Gaza War, they were more likely to have either not voted or selected Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate,” Windmueller said.
“We must acknowledge the rise of the Orthodox vote in NY as being increasingly significant,” he added.
