New poll: Jews won't vote for Obama again

5:52 AM, July 13, 2011 ι Abby W. Schachter

Every presidential election cycle someone somewhere provides proof that, finally, American Jews will stop voting against their own interests and abandon the Democratic Party. A new poll, Tevi Troy argues, indicates that 2012 might actualy be the year. Pat Cadell and John McLaughlin's bipartisan survey shows that only 43 percent of respondents plan to vote for Barack Obama next year.

Troy puts it mildly: "If this holds, it would be a considerable drop from the 78 percent of the Jewish vote Obama received in 2008, and from the standard 75–80 percent of the Jewish vote that Democratic political strategists have come to expect and rely upon."

Actually, if Jews actually if fewer than half of all Jews vote against the Democratic nominee it would be a shocking sea change. So dramatic a shift, in fact, that it seems nearly impossible to believe.

But whether the results of the poll match the election returns is less important than one particular data point Troy highlights. "Obama is likely to have particular trouble with Jews in the all-important state of Florida, as only 34 percent of Florida’s Jews would vote to reelect him."

If the number of Jewish votes for Obama drops by anything close to the levels suggested by this poll the Obama team really should be worried.

The funny part is that weakening Jewish support for Obama may have nothing at all to do with supposedly "Jewish" issues like Israel or a nuclear Iran. As James Carville famously exclaimed, "It's the economy, stupid!"

"According to the American Jewish Committee’s 2008 edition of its annual survey of Jewish opinion, conducted in September, a majority of Jews, 54 percent, wanted the presidential candidates to “talk more” about the economy," wrote Shmuel Rosner after the '08 election.

Nearly 80 percent of Jews voted for Obama last time. Now he's had three years to manage the economy, which is a subject that Jews no less than other voters are deeply concerned about, and the President has turned an economic storm into a disaster.

Oh and one more data point: Obama is now threatening to take social security checks away from seniors. He says this is the Republicans' fault, but does he really think all old people are senile? Who doesn't understand that the President is in charge and if granny doesn't get her check, the guy in the White House let it happen.

Where are there high concentrations of senior citizens? In Florida. Where are there even higher concentrations of Jewish senior citizens? Florida.

Now might be a good time for Obama to change the subject to how good a friend he's been to Israel.