April 12, 2005
IT'S A RELIGION, NOT A RACE (via Michael Burns):
Bush Made Inroads Among Jewish Voters, Study Shows (Ronald Brownstein, April 12, 2005, LA Times)
Jewish voters remained overwhelmingly Democratic in the 2004 presidential election, but President Bush made inroads with those who attend religious services most often, according to a study to be released today.
Or, actual Jews as opposed to putative. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 12, 2005 7:32 PM
There is nothing immutable about Jews voting on the left.
Jewish voters in France are for the most part on the non-Gaullist Right. Jewish voters in Britain split roughly along the lines of the rest of the country, with perhaps a slight Conservative tilt. Jewish voters in the recent Ukraine election tracked their non-Jewish neighbors almost exactly. The Jews of Donetsk and Kharkiv voted for Yanukovich and the Jews of Kiev or Ivano-Frankovsk voted for Yushchenko.
It will probably take another generation here for Jews to start voting their economic interests and their behavior patterns and have a voting demographic not altogether different from Mormons. The problem is that when Jews see religion in the public square, we think of the European experience of what religion in the public square meant for us, not what it means for American Christians. As the American Jewish population becomes increasingly native-born and religious, those feelings should evaporate.
Posted by: bart at April 13, 2005 7:17 AM