Orthodox Jews overwhelmingly support Trump, survey finds
Two men wave Trump flags at a rally Thursday evening organized by Heshy Tischler, the Orthodox radio personality, in protest of coronavirus restrictions in Orthodox neighborhoods. Image by Getty
(JTA) — A new poll shows overwhelming support for President Donald Trump among Orthodox Jews.
The poll, published Wednesday by Ami Magazine, a major Orthodox monthly, found that 83% of Orthodox respondents plan to vote for Trump in the upcoming election, while just 13% plan to vote for Joe Biden. Those numbers represent a dramatic increase from a 2017 poll by the American Jewish Committee which found that 54% of Orthodox Jews had voted for Trump in 2016.
The Ami poll, which was conducted over the past month by an unnamed firm, also found low support among Orthodox Jews for public health restrictions due to COVID-19.
A majority of Orthodox respondents, 58%, believe that government health regulations are excessive or unnecessary, or that the virus poses no threat at all. Only 32% said that the threat is real and that government guidelines, should be followed, and only 18% of Haredi, also known as ultra-Orthodox, respondents. National polls have found that a majority of Americans are in favor of rules mandating wearing masks in public.
The survey includes 1,000 respondents and has a 3.1% margin of error.
The poll’s numbers put Orthodox Jews politically out of step with American Jews overall.
According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, only 27% of American Jews plan to vote for Trump, as opposed to 70% for Biden. Those numbers are statistically equivalent to the 71% of Jews who voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, according to Pew.
The Ami poll places Orthodox support for Trump at a higher level than any other other religious group in the United States. The Pew survey found that the highest level of support for Trump came from Evangelical Christians, with 78% saying they planned to vote for the president. Pew did not report a result for Orthodox Jews.
The Ami poll also found that Haredi Jews are far likelier to vote for Trump than Modern Orthodox Jews. A stunning 95% of Haredi Jews said they plan to vote for Trump, as opposed to 56% of Modern Orthodox Jews.
The poll found that Trump has shed some Modern Orthodox support since last year, when Ami found that 70% of Modern Orthodox respondents approved of the job he was doing. The margin of error for Modern Orthodox Jews in the 2020 poll was approximately 4.8%.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
