Daniel Greenfield
You have to go all the way back to Jimmy Carter in 1980 to find a Democratic candidate who’s polling worse among Jews than Obama is. And that’s no coincidence. Carter scored big numbers against Ford in 1976 only to lose a major chunk of Jewish supporters after four years of pro-Terrorist policies that undermined Israel and security and stability in the Middle East.
Obama reportedly scored 76 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008. Carter picked up 71 percent in 1976. By 1980, Carter was down to 45 percent. The latest polls show Obama down to 59 percent among Jews.
No Democrat has ever won the White House with that low a share of the vote. The Democratic candidates who scored that low, Carter in 1980, Dukakis, Mondale, McGovern, Adlai Stevenson, were all losers who went on to lose the election. To find a Democratic presidential candidate who won less than 60 percent of the Jewish vote and still won the White House, you have to go back 96 years to the election of 1916 where Woodrow Wilson had 55 percent of the Jewish vote against 45 percent for Republican Chris Evans Hughes. And that was considered a very close election.
The Jewish vote does not determine elections, but it is a sign of the loss of support. Romney is taking a Reagan sized bite of the Catholic vote and is within 4 percent of matching Reagan’s numbers among Jews.
