2026 Was Not The Year

Every election cycle, commentators race to breathlessly declare that this will be the year that Jews stop voting Democratic. And then every year it doesn't happen. And then every year Republicans ... well, let me just reprint the chronology I identified way back in 2014.

1) (Non-Jewish) Republicans say they want to be Jews' best friends, particularly with respect to Israel.

2) Jews express policy positions with respect to Israel that differ from those advocated by Republicans.

3) Republicans, cognizant of the greater stakes Jews have in this issue and respectful of Jewish opinions generally, rethink their positions. Republicans accuse Jews of being delusional and/or betraying their own people.

4) Republicans express bafflement that Jews continue to vote Democratic.

We talked about it in 2014, and 2015, and 2017, and 2020. And so again today. 

Exit polling once again found that Jews voted overwhelmingly Democratic on their congressional ballot -- 72%, to be precise, against 24% GOP. That's a net 48 point margin, for those keeping track. It's also remarkably steady -- Democrats have been pulling at least seventy percent of the Jewish vote in every election since 2016 (they were in the mid-to-high sixties in the three before that). The absolute nicest silver lining you could give to the "Jexodus" narrative is that the Jewish Democratic vote didn't appear to spike this year in tandem with the broader Democratic wave. But the thing is that the Jewish vote is so overwhelmingly Democratic that it can sometimes be a bit countercyclical (for example, Jews voted Democratic at a slightly higher rate in 2016 compared to 2012 -- very much not in line with the national trend). And look -- at the end of the day, we're poking around the edges about electoral margins normally seen only by an Assad. There's only so much one can do to "complicate" the voting patterns of a 70+% Democratic constituency.

If we zoom in on Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed reportedly won 60% of the Jewish vote, against Mike Rogers 36%. That's still a crushing margin, albeit lower than the national average and far lower than the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Jocelyn Benson (who is Jewish) received. So if one wants to say that El-Sayed, specifically, underperformed with Jewish voters, I think that's fair enough, although again the difference is between overwhelming support and merely massive support. But it's also worth noting that El-Sayed underperformed Benson generally by about four points, so the gap there wasn't just among Jewish voters.

In any event, the point is that we go through this every year. And every year the results don't change, which somehow doesn't stop us from going through the same this will be the year rigamarole in the next year. Yet ultimately, the basic explanation for why Jews vote Democratic remains as simple as it ever was:

First, on every issue aside from Israel, Jews prefer Democrats to Republicans.

Second, on the issue of Israel, Jews prefer Democrats to Republicans.

The end. 

(Oh, and incidentally, if you're looking for this year's "all the Jews who vote Democratic aren't real Jews" entrant, Inna Vernikov has you covered).