Obama Got 75% of Jewish Vote

By Randall Hoven

The results are in. According to Commentary Magazine ,

"Obama ended up receiving 53 percent of the vote nationwide, but around 75 to 78 percent of the Jewish vote. Only 20 to 23 percent of Jewish voters pulled the lever for McCain, who received 46 percent of the vote overall. Obama scored a greater share of Jewish votes than John Kerry did in 2004. More striking, his performance almost equaled that of Al Gore among Jews in 2000, when Gore's running mate was Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew."

As much as people talk about how groups of voters are going to vote, they always end up voting about the same way, year after year after year. Elections are won by how about 5% of those who vote, meaning about 2% of all those eligible to vote, vote.

In my opinion, the idea of trying to win "the Jewish vote", or the black vote or the Latino vote is ludicrous. Obama could hang out with anti-Semitic radicals and get endorsements from Muammar Qaddafi while McCain could pledge his own life to defend Israel, yet about 75% of Jews would still vote for Obama - because he's the Democrat. This is not rocket science. Jews vote Democrat, about 75% of them do, no matter what. And night follows day.

Feel free to see whatever you like to see in this statistical ink-blot. What I see is the utter futility of Republicans trying to play group politics to win votes. Or moving left to win votes.

There is no payoff in the Republican Party moving left. The Democrats own that brand. Let them have it. Republicans will win votes only by being a legitimate alternative, something different from the Democrats.