Florida Democrats are confident that former Rep. David Jolly, the state’s Democratic nominee for governor, will handily win the Jewish vote over Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), his Republican opponent — and believe Jolly is running a competitive race that could deliver a surprise victory.

But Jolly’s campaign has been complicated by the presence of Angie Nixon, the Democratic candidate for Senate, on the same ticket — a dynamic that Donalds has been quick to elevate — as well as the Sunshine State’s conservative trend.

CNN commentator Van Jones warned on Tuesday that antisemitism threatens the historic alliance between Black Americans and Jews, cautioning that young people are being targeted by online messaging aimed at turning them against Israel, as he was honored at the American Friends of Magen David Adom’s annual New York City gala.

“Jew hatred is poison that is being put into my community, and I’m trying to fight for my community to not get tricked into turning against the only friend we’ve ever had,” Jones said, calling that effort “a moral responsibility.” 

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), a co-chair of the Congressional Jewish Caucus, said Tuesday that Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed must go further to “publicly condemn” an antisemitic ad by an outside group supporting his campaign, arguing that his failure to do so belies his pledges to support the Jewish community.

The ad, by the Cenk Uygur-led Rebellion PAC, blames U.S. aid to Israel for high grocery prices in the United States. El-Sayed’s campaign emphasized in a Monday statement that it was not responsible for the ad and that Rebellion PAC doesn’t speak for El-Sayed, but some critics say that the Democratic nominee needs to explicitly denounce the ad’s contents, which he has not addressed.

Most Israelis voted for change on Tuesday, in the country’s first election since the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks, but a plurality voted for parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc, turning the formation of a majority coalition into a challenging political puzzle. 

In nearly all televised exit polls, 70 out of 120 Knesset seats went to parties that either vowed not to work with Netanyahu or are unlikely to do so, while the coalition lost some 18 seats in the election. Yet by Wednesday morning, with 60% of the votes counted, that combined opposition and Arab bloc had shrunk to 64 seats.

The Israeli opposition bloc, led by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, held a narrow edge over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, according to exit polling released Tuesday night, after polls closed in an election widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s leadership.  

Neither bloc had a majority in any televised exit polls, leaving unclear the trajectory of the coming weeks’ coalition negotiations. The Arab parties appear likely to win a record number of seats in the Knesset, with exit polls showing them winning 17-18 seats — far more than the 10 they currently hold. 

Christina Bohannan, a leading Democratic recruit running against Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, has balanced support for Israel with criticism of its war in Gaza in public comments.

Bohannan, as a result of the advantageous national and statewide environment for Democrats, is now seen as the favorite in the race. In the 2024 election, when she also ran against Miller-Meeks, Bohannan, a former state lawmaker, lost by just 799 votes. The Cook Political Report rates the seat as “lean Democrat,” and a House GOP leadership-aligned super PAC recently pulled funding out of the district.

Israelis going to the polls today are choosing one of over 30 parties running, placing a white slip of paper into a blue envelope, then emerging from behind a screen to drop the envelope into a blue ballot box in front of the polling station committee. At 10 p.m. — 4 p.m. ET — voting will end and exit polls will be released on six television channels. 

The exit polls, however, may not really tell us who won. In 1996, Israelis famously “went to bed with Peres and woke up with Bibi”; the final results, which had Benjamin Netanyahu beating Shimon Peres, were radically different from what the exit polls suggested. 

Differing economic and security initiatives are reshaping regional alignments in the Middle East, raising questions about how the U.S. will manage growing competition between Israel, Turkey and other U.S. allies, experts said Monday.

At a Hudson Institute panel titled “Mecca Pact vs. IMEC: Competing Visions for the New Middle East,” foreign policy analysts and diplomats weighed two rival frameworks reshaping the region — and whether the competition between American partners will deepen divisions or open new avenues for cooperation.