Clinton Leads Trump by 43 Points Among Jewish Voters in Florida
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is leading Republican nominee Donald Trump by 43 points among Jewish voters in Florida, a new poll released on Friday showed.
According to the poll, conducted by Jim Gerstein from GBA Strategies, Clinton is supported by 66 percent of Jewish voters, while Trump is supported by 23 percent.
Trump’s image among Jewish voters is underwater by 50 percent. Only 21 percent view the father of Ivanka Trump and former Grand Marshal at the Israel Day Parade favorably. A whopping 71 percent have an unfavorable view of him.
Clinton is viewed favorably by 57 percent of Jewish voters and unfavorably by 33 percent.
The only group Trump is doing well is among Orthodox Jewish voters (6 percent of the Florida Jewish electorate). According to the poll, Trump leads Clinton 66-22 percent among Orthodox Jews. Among all non-Orthodox voters, Clinton leads Trump 77-22.
Jewish voters represent 3 to 6 percent of the electorate in Florida, a state that is expected to be one of the toss-up battleground states that could determine the presidential race.
Clinton is ahead by 3.3 percentage points in Florida, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
“I think that in a situation where the race is almost certain to be as close as it will be, that, obviously, every community’s vote is going to be crucial and the Jewish community’s vote is something which could be expected to play a factor in this race, for sure,” Andrew Weinstein, an attorney and prominent Democratic donor from Coral Springs, told Jewish Insider.
The Republican Jewish Coalition highlighted the fact that Clinton is currently underperforming, polling lower than Obama’s actual portion of the vote in 2012. “This recently released poll of Jewish voters in Florida confirms again that Jews continue to flee the Democrat Party in greater and greater numbers,” Matt Brooks, RJC’s Executive Director told Jewish Insider is a statement. “Due to President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s policies, voters have seen the world fall into chaos as well as the erosion of our close alliance with Israel. Four years after President Obama received the lowest amount of support from Jewish voters in decades, Democrats should be panicked to see Hillary Clinton falling even further behind.”
In 2012, President Obama got 68% of the Jewish vote in the Sunshine State, while Republican nominee Mitt Romney got 31 percent, according to exit polls.
A J Street exit poll also showed that 54 percent never considered voting for Romney, while only 27 percent always considered voting against Obama. Numbers from an internal poll conducted by Democratic pollster Mark Mellman in October put Obama’s support at 61 percent, to Romney’s 33 percent.
In an interview with Jewish Insider last year, NJDC’s chairman Greg Rosenbaum boasted that Florida ended up in the Obama column in 2012 due to a concentrated effort to mobilize Jewish voters in the Sunshine State in the last weeks leading to Election Day. An exit poll conducted by Melman showed an increase of support from 59 to 71 percent – a twelve point shift in seven weeks, which was about 144,000 additional votes. The President’s margin of victory in Florida was less than 1 percent – 70,000 votes.
