Even as the Democratic Party has nominated several anti-Israel candidates, two-thirds of Jewish voters said that they plan to vote Democrat in the midterm election, according to a poll released on Wednesday.
The survey by the Jewish Voters Resource Center suggests that 67% plan to vote for Democrats and just 26% plan to vote Republican in November.
“Democracy, the cost-of-living and a deep hostility toward Donald Trump are driving the Jewish vote,” said Jim Gerstein, principal at GBAO Strategies, which conducted the poll.
“For Jewish voters, this is an election about stopping Trump,” according to Gerstein, who has worked for Democratic candidates and committees.
Nearly a year after Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, Democrats nominated others who expressed the same views—including that Israel is guilty of “genocide” in Gaza—in primary contests against pro-Israel Democrats.
The list includes Dr. Abdul El-Sayed over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in the Michigan Senate primary, Adam Hamawy for the House in New Jersey over a large field of candidates, including East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen, and former city comptroller Brad Lander over Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) in New York City.
The anti-Israel candidates singled out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee among the political action committees spending millions of dollars for favored candidates.
In July, a majority of House Democrats voted to cut off aid to Israel after most Senate Democrats voted in April to block some weapons sales to the Jewish state.
But that hasn’t dissuaded most Jews from continuing to support the Democratic Party.
A midterm election is often seen as a referendum on the president, and Jewish voters said that they disapprove of U.S. President Donald Trump by 75% to 25%.
An even larger majority, 82%, expressed an unfavorable view of Vice President JD Vance, while just 14% had a favorable view. Vance has embraced antisemitic commentator Tucker Carlson, whom Jewish Republicans have criticized over his anti-Israel rhetoric and his interview last year with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Carlson is a proponent of the “great replacement theory,” which posits that Jews are bringing in non-white immigrants to displace white Christians. That’s the view Robert Bowers expressed when he gunned down 11 Jews at Sabbath services in Pittsburgh in the worst antisemitic attack in American history.
In the poll, 89% of Jewish voters said that they were concerned about antisemitism in the United States. While 61% said Trump was good for Israel, 50% said he was antisemitic, and 71% said he was racist.
By 70% to 30%, they said that they didn’t think Trump would accept the results of the 2026 election. Trump is still claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though members of his administration and election administrators have called it “the most secure in American history.”
Some 71% of Jews said that they were emotionally attached to Israel, but that issue was not as important to voters as the cost of living and affordability (37%), future of democracy (36%), Jew-hatred (23%) and healthcare (18%). Israel came in fifth, at 16%.
The poll found that 67% viewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unfavorably, with just 27% expressing a favorable view of the long-time Israeli leader, and 65% opposed his policies on Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Some 35% supported his policies.
“Jews remain emotionally attached to Israel, but they oppose Netanyahu and his policies, and it is a lower-tier voting issue,” Gerstein said.
“It’s particularly striking to see the vast majority expressing concern that Trump will not accept the outcome of the election,” he said.
