In recent years, Republicans have made inroads into the overwhelmingly Democratic constituency of American Jews. But this year, Republican Jews — or Jewish donors to the Republican party, at least — are abandoning their party’s nominee at a stunningly high rate.
In 2012, 71 percent of the $240 million that Jewish donors gave to the two major-party nominees went to President Obama’s re-election campaign; 29 percent went to Mitt Romney’s campaign, according to our analysis of campaign contributors, which used a predictive model to estimate which donors are Jewish based on their names and other characteristics. This ratio of support mirrors how Jewish voters cast their ballots in 2012.
So far in 2016, of all the money given to major-party candidates by donors who appear to be Jewish, 96 percent has gone to Hillary Clinton and just 4 percent has gone to Donald Trump…
It is possible that the abandonment is about policy — as discussed above, there are policy-oriented reasons why some Jews are not fond of Trump. But policy is not the only factor at work here. This is probably also about culture and social identification. If Jews perceive that the kinds of people who support Republicans are not like themselves, then they will update their identification with the party. To be willing to donate to and affiliate themselves with a party, a person needs to look at the other people supporting that party and think, “Those are my people.” For Jews, Trump-aligned Republicans appear to be very much not their people.
