Kamala Loses the Jews

A new poll of New Yorkers reveals a surprising tale.

By Daniel Greenfield September 26, 2024

In September, the Jewish Democratic Council of America rolled out a poll which claimed that 72% of American Jews backed Kamala, and that Jewish voters didn’t really care about Israel or antisemitism, only about “abortion”, “climate change” and the “future of democracy”.

The poll by the Democrat firm GBAO Strategies was ridiculed as rigged even by the people who have spent years repeating back the results of similar past polls claiming that 70% of Jews voted for Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Exit polls usually don’t register Jewish voters and virtually all polls of Jewish voters are conducted by Democrat and liberal groups. And they’re just as worthless, but they fit people’s preconceptions of the Jewish vote.

The stereotype of Jews voting 70% for the Democrat candidate seeped in even as local precinct data in Jewish neighborhoods raised serious questions about whether that was really true.

And actual polling data of Jews suggests that VP Kamala Harris has a Jewish problem.

In August, a Siena college poll of New Yorkers showed that Trump was not only performing surprisingly well in the state, but was narrowly winning the Jewish vote 50% to 49%.

Siena is the only major independent pollster whose election surveys regularly include Jews. While there are many polls out there, Siena surveys Jews among the electorate rather than the vanity 70% push polls of Jews by Democratic strategists for liberal groups like the JDCA.

Rather than sensing danger from her poor performance among Jews, Kamala doubled down.

The JDCA convened a ‘Jewish Americans for Kamala Harris’ online rally consisting of anti-Israel activists and hateful figures including Randi Weingarten, the teachers’ union boss who claimed that “American Jews are now part of the ownership class” and “want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it.”

Vice President Kamala Harris named Ilan Goldenberg, an anti-Israel activist serving as her Middle East adviser, as her ‘liaison’ to the Jewish community. Goldenberg had previously advocated for a deal in which “Hamas would retain some of its military capabilities” and argued that “half the root causes are Israeli actions, in terms of — especially just focusing on Gaza, on the blockade. And the other half is Hamas’ choice to use violence and arm itself in response.”

Kamala also named Nasrina Bargzie, her deputy counsel who had ties to anti-Israel and pro-terrorist activism, and had fought Berkeley Jewish students complaining about antisemitism in court, as her Muslim liaison. She also named Brenda Abdelall, an anti-Israel activist who claimed that Jews control America, as her Arab liaison, and refused to fire her.

Coming off the DNC convention and the debate, Kamala’s numbers should have improved.

Instead they are actually down in New York. And the drop is strongest among New York Jews.

The September poll showed that Trump had increased his narrow lead among New York Jews from 50% to 54%. And Kamala’s support had fallen from 49% to 44%. These might be some of the worst numbers ever for a Democrat presidential candidate in New York.

Had Trump made his case with Jewish voters? The September poll showed that his numbers among New York Jews had flipped from a 44% favorable and a 52% unfavorable, to a 52% favorable and a 48% unfavorable. But more distinctly, Kamala had turned Jews off.

In August, 50% of New York Jews had a favorable view of Kamala Harris while only 43% had an unfavorable view of her. By September the numbers had shockingly flipped into the negative.

51% of New York Jews now have an unfavorable view of Kamala.

The Harris campaign’s efforts to appeal to Jews by bringing out Randi Weingarten and other anti-Israel activists, and then summoning Doug Emhoff to praise his multicultural marriage to Kamala at the DNC, describing how he attends a racist church whose pastor had pleaded with his wife to stop supporting Israel and back the ‘Palestinians’ because “their struggle is our struggle as people of color who have been oppressed” had not only failed, they had backfired.

Appointing Ilan Goldenberg, an anti-Israel activist with no roots in the mainstream Jewish community, to head up Jewish outreach and relying on Sharon Brous, an anti-Israel clergywoman favored by Emhoff and Hollywood celebrities, had failed to win over Jews. There was an early warning when the Biden campaign had previously rolled out Senator Chuck Schumer to attack Israel and demand an end to its military campaign against Hamas.

A Siena poll showed that Schumer’s popularity among New York Jews crashed from 82% to 48% with 45% disapproving of Chuck. The August poll only showed a slight improvement with Schumer crawling up to a 53% approval rating among a group that used to be his base.

But VP Kamala Harris, surrounded by anti-Israel radicals, chose to believe that they represented the Jewish community. She chose to embrace anti-Israel politics to win over Hamas and Hezbollah supporters in Dearborn, Michigan, while occasionally making sympathetic noises about the hostages, outsourcing Jewish outreach to anti-Israel activists like Ilan Goldenberg and widely hated figures like Randi Weingarten with a history of making ugly remarks about Jews, while believing she would still do well with Jewish voters. But that’s not working out.

The JDCA rigged poll was a transparently desperate attempt at damage control. Its only intended audience is the Harris campaign echo chamber looking for evidence that discarding Jewish concerns about Israel and antisemitism is the best way to win over Jewish voters.

As VP, Kamala had taken the lead in criticizing Israel for the Biden administration. After the coup that put her at the top of the ticket, she occasionally pivoted to assuage the concerns of a few high-profile donors like former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, but continued to pressure Israel to surrender to Hamas. Reports about Kamala’s private meetings with the Dearborn mayor who had spoken at a pro-Hamas rally only further alienated the Jewish community.

Her rhetoric about giving Israel “what it needs to defend itself” was rightly seen as a backdoor endorsement for an offensive arms embargo. Her recent boast that “one of the things that we’ve done that I’m entirely supportive of is the pause that we put on the 2000-pound bombs” that Israel needed to fight terrorists confirmed previously suspicions about Kamala’s backing for an incremental arms embargo.

But above all else as the Jewish community faces record rates of antisemitism, especially at colleges, Kamala failed to condemn campus antisemitic riots and harassment, and continued praising the perpetrators, describing them as “showing exactly what the human emotion should be” While the Biden-Harris administration occasionally denounced ugly incidents, including the assault on the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles, it did not speak out against those behind it.

And some American Jews were paying attention.

Kamala’s sharp drop and growing unpopularity among New York Jews shows how badly she turned off Jewish voters in a short time. And while New York’s Jewish community (at least outside Manhattan) tends to be more conservative and traditional, it is likely that these numbers will at least partly reflect a larger trend in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

By embracing anti-Israel policies and rhetoric, while failing to stand up to antisemitism from her base, Vice President Kamala Harris alienated many Jews. And her numbers show it.

After a presidential term full of antisemitism and pandering to Islamic terrorists, including aiding the Islamic takeover of Iran, Carter took in only 45% of the Jewish vote in the 1980 election.

In New York, Kamala is already down to 44%.