Former President Donald Trump remains a dividing line between Israelis and American Jews, according to polling conducted in both countries before and after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to become the 47th U.S. president.
Preliminary exit polling conducted after people voted Nov. 5 found that 79% of U.S. Jews cast ballots for Harris, compared with 21% for Trump, The Times of Israel reported. Those percentages represent the worst pro-Trump voting among American Jews in his three runs for president: According to polling results compiled by the Jewish Virtual Library, Trump lost the Jewish vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016, 71% to 24%, and to Joe Biden in 2020, 68% to 30%.
If the 2024 numbers are accurate, Trump lost ground among Jewish voters despite suggestions that more Jews would abandon Harris over what some perceived as insufficient support for Israel during the ongoing war against Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies. Fox News pollsters, however, found that only 66% of Jews voted for Harris, and Tablet Magazine examined the difficulty of assessing the Jewish electorate’s preferences.
By contrast, Israelis did embrace Trump in greater numbers than ever because of the belief that he would provide stronger support than Harris, according to The Times of Israel. A poll released just before the election found that 66% of Israelis hoped that Trump would win, compared with 17% for Harris. Those numbers are similar to 2020, when 63% of Israelis favored Trump and 19% preferred Biden, according to the British newspaper The Guardian. But in 2016, CNN reported that Israelis preferred Clinton to Trump, 42% to 24%.
Trump won over Israelis with actions such as moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, recognizing the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights in 2019, proposing an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in January 2020 and facilitating the Abraham Accords in September 2020.
A June 10, 2018, article by the Jewish Telegraph Agency examines the polling data showing the divide between Israeli and American Jews when it comes to approval of Trump’s policies. Comparing a September 13, 2017, poll by the American Jewish Committee with a June 7, 2018, NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed a slight American Jewish warming toward Trump’s policies; however, the political gap between the two largest centers of Jewish life remains.
Part of the problem is an American Jewish perception that antisemitism was rising in the United States years before the spike seen after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Many American Jews viewed Trump’s connections to the alt-right as a catalyst for that phenomenon and saw his presidency as legitimizing white nationalist movements in America.
Beyond domestic issues such as the rise of antisemitism, American Jews were not as supportive as Israelis for Trump actions such as the embassy move, which 85% of Israeli Jews backed but only 47% of Jews in America favored in 2018.
For further reading on the large distances between American Jews and Israeli Jews on issues of mutual importance, please see this February 2018 article.