President Obama’s support among Jewish voters is down 19 percentage points since his 2008 election victory, a new poll reveals.
A recent Investor’s Business Daily/Christian Science Monitor/TIPP Poll, released Monday, found that while President Obama leads in overall polling — 46 percent to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s 44 percent — his support among Jewish voters has dropped from 78 percent in 2008 to 59 percent today.
The poll — conducted during the midst of the Democratic National Convention’s omission of God and Jerusalem as the capital of Israel from their platform, only to have an effort to reinsert the two items booed by Obama delegates — further found that Romney garners 35 percent of the Jewish vote, up from Senator John McCain’s 21 percent showing in 2008.
Six percent of Jews indicated they were currently undecided, according to the poll. In 2008, one percent of Jewish voters cast their ballot for a candidate other than Obama or McCain.
Jonathan S. Tobin at Commentary Magazine, who initially noted the drop, pointed out that the decline is unmatched in any other demographic groups. He chalked the decline up to the administration’s relationship with Israel.
“While some losses in Jewish support could be put down to disillusionment with his economic policies that is shared across the board, the only conceivable explanation for this far greater than average loss of Jewish votes is the administration’s difficult relationship with Israel,” Tobin wrote.
The telephone poll, which surveyed slightly more Democrats than Republicans, queried 808 registered voters across the country from Sept. 4 – Sept. 9. It has a margin of error of plus/minus 3.5 percentage points.