From the Newsletter | Exit Polls Hint at Trump Gains with Jewish Voters

It was a historic comeback. After four years in the political wilderness, former President Donald Trump handily beat Vice President Kamala Harris in an election that will likely see him win all seven swing states, besting the polls while the GOP won a majority in the Senate, and potentially could take the House. Initial results and exit polling tell the story of an American electorate shifting to the right across the board.

According to preliminary analysis by The New York Times, Trump increased his vote share among nearly every group in the electorate. In urban and suburban counties, in counties with high Black populations, in counties with both high and low rates of college graduation, in counties with large populations of older voters and in counties with large populations of younger voters, the once and future president bested his 2020 results by four to six points. Most strikingly, Trump made major gains among non-white and Hispanic voters. In majority-minority counties, he performed seven points better than last time around, and in counties where a quarter or more of the population is Hispanic, Trump improved on his previous performance by ten points.

Results are still coming in and the narrative is hardly set, but Trump appears to have won with one of the most diverse GOP coalitions in the party’s history, with the possible exception of 2004. In one remarkable data point, Trump won in the 40 percent African American Anson County, NC, just the second Republican to do so since Reconstruction (Nixon won it in his 1972 landslide victory against George McGovern while winning the state with 70 percent of the vote).

And while Trump didn’t put any states in play that were not considered swing states at the outset of the evening, he made remarkable progress in Democratic strongholds. Currently, Trump appears to have lost Maryland by 13 points, a 20 percent improvement over his 2020 performance; New Jersey by five, 11 points better than the previous contest; Connecticut by 10, 10 points less than 2020; and New York by 11, a 12-point improvement from last time around. And, although results are still preliminary, in Trump’s old stomping grounds, the liberal bastion of New York City, the former president appears to have bested his previous performances by double digits.

In addition to Trump’s historic success among Hispanic voters, early indicators suggest he made major inroads with Jewish voters in 2024 as well. Nationally, the Jewish vote looks similar to previous cycles of late. A survey of Jewish voters conducted by J Street found that Trump won 26 percent of Jewish votes nationally, compared to 71 percent for Harris, which would be a slight underperformance relative to 2020 when he lost 69 to 30. The Republican Jewish Committee reported that 31 percent of Jewish voters opted for Trump. Some polls suggest Harris improved on Biden’s 2020 performance, with the National Election Pool’s exit polls putting her support from Jewish voters at 79 percent. NBC News and CNN both had her vote share at 78.

Exit polls tell something of a different story. In the 2024 Fox News Voter Analysis survey, Trump did a little better among Jewish voters, and had a better margin, losing the group 66-32. But in a number of state exit polls from that survey, where the margin of error is higher, the difference is more stark. These include New York, where the data suggests Harris only won Jewish voters 54-46, Florida, where the vice president outran Trump 56-44, and Arizona where the margin was 61-38 in Harris’s favor. These findings should be taken with a grain of salt but do seem to indicate a shift in the Jewish vote choice in certain states. To some degree this makes intuitive sense, as growing swaths of Jews in New York and Florida in particular are more observant and more conservative than Jews in other states as Yehuda Kurtzer recently pointed out in an interview with Moment.

Likewise, in counties with high Jewish populations, Trump bested his 2020 results by more than his national performance this year; while votes are still coming in, particularly from California, Trump seems to have increased his national vote share by four percent. In Rockland County, NY, America’s most Jewish county, where almost a third of the population is Jewish, Trump outperformed his 2020 benchmark by almost eight points, flipping it from blue to red. Likewise, in Palm Beach County, FL, where 15 percent of the population is Jewish, Trump improved by six points. And in Nassau County, NY, home of the five towns and where 14 percent of residents are Jewish, Trump flipped the district, exceeding his previous showing by eight points.

There are still votes to count and more analysis to be done, but as of right now Trump appears to have had a historic electoral showing in what is sure to be seen as an emphatic rejection of the Biden-Harris administration’s vision for America—and perhaps Israel. What Trump and the GOP will do with their mandate will become clearer in the coming weeks and months.