Published: 10 May 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
OUTSIDE ISRAEL there is minimal hard data about Jewish voting patterns, but there appears to be an increasing number of Jewish communities worldwide that are shifting from their traditional “left-leaning” preferences towards more centrist or even far-right candidates in some countries.
While this trend has been clearly replicated by Jewish voters in last month’s Israeli elections, especially younger ones, the outstanding exception appears to be American Jews, who historically support the Democratic Party at close to 75 per cent. This is down from 1964, when Democrat Lyndon Johnson won 90 per cent of the Jewish vote.
Pundits do not expect this will shift significantly in the 2020 US elections, despite Donald Trump moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognising the Golan Heights as part of Israel, two of the most blatant pro-Israel gestures made by any American administration in many years.
What is interesting about the US exception is that many American Jews point to their Jewish social values as one of the main reasons for their support of the Democratic Party, which they believe promotes equality and opportunity for all. If it’s Jewish values of tikkun olam [repairing the world] that are motivating American Jewish voters, why doesn’t this resonate in other, smaller Jewish communities?
“Historically, Jews (in the UK) have voted further to the left than their economic position would suggest – that is, when you compare them to non-Jews in equivalent socio-economic brackets, they are further to the left of centre than others,” says Jonathan Boyd, executive director of the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research.
But he adds that in recent years there has been a significant shift away from the Labour Party, primarily propelled by its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Recent polls suggest the Jewish vote for Labour could be in the unprecedented low teens.
In South Africa, Jews have a long history of supporting the Democratic Alliance and its predecessor, the Progressive Federal Party, with more than 56 per cent voting for the Democratic Party in the inaugural non-racial democratic elections in 1994, says Wendy Kahn, national director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.
This is starting to shift, she explains. “As we move further and further into our democracy, I think the blind loyalty is maybe dissipating and people are becoming more critical and circumspect in their voting.”
She believes the community’s voting habits are increasingly heterogeneous, motivated primarily by local issues that affect all South Africans. “Issues such as service delivery (in particular electricity and water), crime and fighting corruption remain on the top of the list.” Kahn noted there were members of the community talking about “voting for [President Cyril] Ramaphosa” from the ANC in Wednesday’s national elections.
Although it’s a strongly identified Zionist community, she doubts “that any South African would make their voting decision exclusively based on the parties’ stance on Israel”. She says the party with the strongest connection with Israel is the African Christian Democratic Party, and, in the last local election, it received record numbers of votes in one of the predominantly Jewish voting areas.
In Australia, political party support for Israel has played a more prominent role. From the late 1940s to late ’60s, a majority of Jewish voters favoured the Labor Party, but “... a clear majority of Australian Jews have supported the Liberal/National Party Coalition since the mid-1970s due to a range of political, cultural, religious, social and economic factors. It would appear that the support for the state of Israel is the key factor driving this conservative voting preference,” says Associate Professor Philip Mendes, of Monash University.
Mendes says since Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam was perceived to have abandoned his party’s traditional pro-Israel record in 1974, there has been a shift to the Liberal Party. This was despite the Jewish community being politically and ideologically diverse and that both major parties have provided bipartisan support for Israel for at least the past 25 years.
Despite the majority support for the Coalition, Mendes’ conclusions mirror Jonathan Boyd’s. “On average, a higher number of Jews who are affluent appear to vote Labor or Green than would be the case in the rest of the population.
“Many Jews, irrespective of socio-economic status, seem to hold liberal attitudes on social issues such as refugees, multiculturalism, Indigenous welfare, illicit drugs, gay rights and climate change.” Interestingly, this is similar to American Jews who support the Democratic Party’s policies.
Boyd points to a contradiction to the Corbyn factor: ultra-orthodox (Haredi) Jews in the UK who increasingly support Labour for socio-economic reasons are “currently quite anti-Conservative because the government is clamping down on religiously extremist schools”.
“The pressure is building for those schools to teach modern liberal values – gender equality, LGBT+ education, etc – and the Haredi system isn’t enamoured by the pressure,” Boyd says.
Although currently only about 20 per cent of the UK’s Jewish population, by 2030 half of all Jewish children born in the UK will be born into Haredi families, according to projections.
This is in sharp contrast to US voting patterns, where orthodox Jewish Americans, who also have a higher birth rate than the general Jewish population, are more likely to be Republican voters.
Surveys by the Pew Research Centre also find they have a much higher emotional attachment to Israel than other Jews.
Maybe this is the real trend to notice. Religious voters are much more likely to vote in blocs as directed by their religious leadership, and this is particularly noticeable in Israel with Shas and United Torah Judaism. Rabbis and spiritual leaders have instructed their followers it’s a mitzvah to vote, even if it’s someone’s wedding day or if they are sitting shiva. This contributes to the significantly higher voter turnout in ultra-orthodox communities.
Some 31 Knesset members are either ultra-orthodox or national religious in the new Knesset, comprising more than a quarter of the 120-member plenum. If demographic projections are accurate, this representation is only going to grow.
The ultra-orthodox and religious parties are critical to the makeup of the new government and impose extensive demands on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order to be part of the Coalition, particularly when it comes to issues of religion and state.
