U.S. President Donald Trump fared very poorly in an online poll released on Wednesday by a new firm called Jewish Voters Resource Center, which identifies as nonpartisan but does not list its leadership on its website.
The 800 registered Jewish voters, who were polled between April 21 and May 1, overwhelmingly gave Trump failing grades on his first 100 days in office, with many saying that the president is “dangerous” and a “fascist.”
“The intensity of the opposition is striking,” Jim Gerstein, of GBAO Strategies, which conducted the survey, said on a call with JNS and other news outlets.
Trump only got high marks from Orthodox voters, who approved of the president’s performance at a rate of 75% to 25%, while Jewish voters overall saw the near-mirror image, with 26% approving and 74% disapproving of Trump’s performance.
“This is a very different and distinct audience that has different beliefs,” Gerstein told reporters on the call.
Sam Markstein, political director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JNS that “time and time again, Democrat pollsters get it wrong when it comes to Jewish support for President Donald Trump.”
“They were wildly wrong in 2024, as President Trump received an historic share of the Jewish vote both nationally and in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada that helped to decisively deliver him the presidency,” Markstein said.
“The cold, hard vote numbers are very clear, and no amount of Democrat spin will change that,” Markstein told JNS. “This ‘poll’ is just more of the same tired political playbook.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition, which supports the president, has made an unprecedented push to reach Jewish voters. Some exit polls in November, which CNN reported, suggested that the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, outpolled Trump 78% to 22% among Jewish voters.
Gerstein told reporters that the conventional wisdom about what motivates Jewish voters is wrong, and the GOP’s attempts to increase its share of that vote are doomed to fail.
“They do not like Donald Trump personally,” Gerstein said. “They don’t believe he shares their positions, and the character issue is very deep.”
“No amount of effort to attract Jewish voters is going to be very difficult to penetrate those attitudes,” he told reporters. “You can put a lot of money into selling a product. If the product is not something people want to buy at all, your impact is going to be very limited.”
The poll suggests confirmation of the liberal and Democratic orientation of most U.S. Jews. More than two-thirds (69%) of respondents identified as Democrats or leaning Democratic, while just 23% identified with the Republican Party. Nearly half (46%) identified as liberal, compared with 34% as moderate and 17% as Republicans.
More than seven in 10 (72%) said that calling Trump “dangerous” describes him well. Almost 70% said the same about calling the president “racist” or “fascist.”
Respondents were also divided on whether calling Trump “antisemitic” described him well, with 52% saying “yes” and 48% saying “no.” The four-point difference was within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Trump received low marks for his handling of Jew-hatred, which has continued to set new highs after the Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Anti-Defamation League and others.
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents disapproved of the way Trump was handling Jew-hatred, while 34% approved.
Majorities of American Jews said that some of the administration’s actions made matters worse, such as Elon Musk telling a far-right German party that there was “too much focus on past guilt,” a reference to the Holocaust (80%); Trump saying that Jews who don’t support him hate Israel and their religion (64%); and the administration arresting and deporting residents who have protested against Israel (61%).
American Jews weren’t enamored of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu either, with 34% viewing him favorably and 64% unfavorably.
“That is a quite stunning statement about the president of Israel during a time of war,” Gerstein told reporters.
The pollster said that Netanyahu’s popularity began to wane among U.S. Jews when he accepted an invitation in 2015 by the Republican House speaker, John Boehner, to address Congress. In his remarks, Netanyahu criticized the Iran nuclear deal that then-President Barack Obama was negotiating.
Netanyahu’s popularity dropped further when he embraced Trump during the Republican president’s first term in office, according to Gerstein.
By 69% to 31%, Jewish voters expressed a strong attachment to Israel, though that has waned somewhat in the months after Oct. 7. Prior to the attack, 72% said they were emotionally attached to the Jewish state. That grew to 82% after the attack, but stood at 69% in this poll.
“When Jews are looking at Israel and thinking about Israel, it’s very striking how negative the attitudes toward Netanyahu are,” Gerstein said.