Israel Matzav

Orthodox Jews never bought into Obama and never will

Long Island's Jewish Star has some impressive statistics on how few Orthodox Jews in the United States voted for President Obumbler (Hat Tip: Jennifer Rubin).

Prior to the election in 2008 a poll conducted by the American Jewish Committee revealed that only 13 percent of Orthodox Jews said they would support Obama. After the election, the Orthodox Union compiled a short-list of precincts with “High concentration of Orthodox voters.”

Lakewood, NJ voters favored the McCain-Palin ticket by a margin of 69 percent to 31 percent for Obama-Biden. The Lawrence Middle School polling station in Lawrence, NY recorded 81 percent of people voting for McCain, the highest percentage on Long Island. While the numbers are not too shocking given the tendency of Orthodox voters to support Republican platforms, anecdotally it seems as if the president is faring even worse in the Orthodox community than might otherwise be expected.

As to why that's the case, the article mentions two possibilities: The Orthodox Jewish community's stronger support for Israel than that of other Jews, and racism in the Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) community. I believe the former explanation and not the latter. The article mentions that Obama had an 80% disapproval rating in Israel from the get-go, and it's only gotten higher. (You may recall that I wrote a number of posts on Israelis and American-Israelis support for McCain during the election campaign). That certainly has nothing to do with racism.

In any event, this ought to provide Obama with some food for thought.

“I think that it’s probably to the benefit of the Jewish community that we have two parties vying for the Jewish vote and they can’t take it for granted,” said Sarna. “When we had a Republican president who was advised to ‘Eff the Jews, they don’t vote for us,’ that was clearly a bad thing from the point of view of the Jews. “

“Most know that the two presidents in recent decades who were most disliked by the Jews, Carter and HW Bush, were one-term presidents. Mr. Obama, if he wants to be a two-term president, he will remember that.”

Read it all.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:58 AM