Jewish voters back Democrats despite Israel criticism, J Street poll finds

El-Sayed won Michigan by 7 points after primary fight over Israel

The J Street survey of 800 self-identified Jewish voters was conducted by GBAO Strategies from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3 among people who voted on or before Election Day, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The result in Michigan was the clearest test of whether criticism of Israel would cost Democrats support among Jewish voters. El-Sayed, who was critical of the Israeli government over conflicts with its Arab neighbors and of the outsized spending by AIPAC, emerged from a contentious Democratic primary against U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham) that appeared, at least on the surface, to damage his standing with some Michigan Jewish voters.

Some Michigan Jewish Democrats responded by calling on voters in the Senate race to leave their ballots blank or vote instead for the Republican nominee, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers. J Street did not specifically poll Michigan’s Senate race, but Tali deGroot, the group’s vice president for digital and political strategy, said those factors did not sway Jewish voters in Michigan from supporting El-Sayed.

“The vast majority of Jews voted for Democrats across the country,” deGroot said. “It was just another chapter, ‘Will the American Jewish community abandon the Democratic Party?’ And the answer is no. The American Jewish vote is a reliably Democratic vote.”

DeGroot said “American Jews support a relationship with Israel that is grounded in values and shared interest.”

Once all the votes were counted, El-Sayed defeated Rogers by 7 percentage points — a much wider margin than the 2024 Senate race between U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) and Rogers, which came in within a single percentage point in a Republican wave election.

An analysis by Millions of Michiganians, the super PAC for Progress Michigan, a nonprofit that supports progressive policies, found that El-Sayed’s share of the vote in 72 precincts with large Jewish populations was just 1.3 percentage points lower than Slotkin’s share in those same precincts in 2024.

Jim Gerstein, the principal at GBAO, cautioned against reading too much into that precinct-level comparison on a call last week presenting J Street’s polling data.

“These precinct level data, they also have non-Jews in those precincts, so we don’t know which way those votes went and what percentage of those were moved by Jewish voters versus the larger number of people in those precincts that are not Jewish,” Gerstein said. “The other thing is, in the precincts where they are overwhelmingly Jewish, those Jews are going to have different perspectives than Jews who live in less Jewish-dominated precincts.”

Millions of Michiganians also argued that El-Sayed performed well among Jewish voters despite an active campaign by Nonnegotiable Michigan, a coalition of rabbis and Michigan Jews that said it could not vote for El-Sayed unless he publicly recognized the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state and ensured the safety of American Jews if elected. Nonnegotiable Michigan also championed a write-in campaign for “Emma Lazarus,” a 19th-century author and Jewish political activist.

Millions of Michiganians counted 470 anti-El-Sayed write-in votes across the 72 precincts it analyzed, and 253 undervotes — meaning that less than 0.25% of total voters in the governor’s race, decisively won by Democrat Jocelyn Benson, chose to leave the ballot blank for El-Sayed.

DeGroot said that opposition represented only a small portion of Jewish voters who considered Israel a top issue, and she argued El-Sayed did well to shift his general election campaign away from Israel and AIPAC toward “the issues that affect the vast majority of Michiganders: affordability, healthcare, cost of gas, issues that the American Jewish community is actually voting on.”

That framing tracks with J Street’s polling, which found the future of democracy and the cost of living were by far the top concerns for Jewish voters, at 44% and 34% respectively, while policy toward Israel stood at just 14%.

Debbie Rosenman, a member of the progressive Michigan Indivisible Fighting 9 activist group, supported El-Sayed because of his progressive values and the issues he championed. Rosenman said Jewish voters like her shared those values and voted accordingly.

David Kramer, a Democratic fundraiser and member of Nonnegotiable Michigan who ended up publicly supporting Rogers, said he had “zero regrets” about the stance he and other Jewish Democrats had taken during the election.

“I think that we spoke from a point of moral clarity and a position of caring about Jewish safety and security, and our place in the community,” Kramer said. “Even though Abdul failed to meet us on those points, we still put an important marker down, and it’s a template for other candidates and for other elected officials. It was never about just one race and one person.”

While there was no way to avoid the U.S.-Israel relationship being a political football in the years to come, DeGroot warned candidates and outside groups against the “instrumentalization and weaponization” of the Jewish vote, saying the data shows younger American Jewish voters are becoming more progressive and shifting toward ending military aid to Israel.

“Something we found in this cycle is that a candidate’s willingness to buck AIPAC was an indication of their general willingness to buck the status quo, and I expect that to continue,” deGroot said. “Voters want to see candidates say the status quo is not right, and we’re going to change it.”

Rosenman said Jews who supported El-Sayed could transfer their support to another progressive candidate in the presidential election even if that candidate held preconditions on the U.S.-Israel relationship, particularly if the candidate possessed qualities they saw in El-Sayed, like his ability to communicate complex issues.

Rosenman also said many American Jews were waiting to give the Israeli government a chance to reform itself before fully rethinking U.S.-Israel ties — an outlook that could depend in part on Israel’s recent parliamentary elections, which left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing bloc short of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Opposition parties and Arab-led parties collectively won enough seats to prevent Netanyahu’s bloc from securing a majority, leaving the formation of a new governing coalition uncertain.

If Netanyahu were to lose power, Rosenman said progressive Jews like her could be more “patient” with Israel if it becomes more “open-minded and responsive to the needs of the Israeli people and their neighbors.”

Rosenman said another factor will be El-Sayed’s performance as a senator, and whether he can deliver on his baseline promises for healthcare and ending the corrupting influence of money in politics.

“I think there were a lot of people who were elected who he can find partners with, and so we’re going to be watching him,” Rosenman said. “And based on how he does, or what the impression is of how he’s doing, that will have an effect on how people feel, because I don’t think Jewish voters are changing their values.”