Jewish voters appear to have moved toward Republicans in Tuesday’s midterm elections, even as Democrats won a sweeping victory and regained control of both chambers of Congress.

A national NBC News exit poll found that 68% of Jewish voters supported Democrats, compared with 31% who backed Republican candidates. The same polling firm found in 2024 that 78% of Jews backed Kamala Harris. In Michigan’s closely watched Senate race, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed underperformed in precincts with large Jewish populations compared with other statewide Democratic candidates.

That suggests a smaller Democratic advantage than in previous elections, though differences in polling methods make it difficult to measure the size of the shift.

But some Jewish Democrats dispute the idea that Jewish voters are turning away from their party.

Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, argued that “the Jewish vote was a critical component of a winning democratic coalition,” given that the blue sweep was so big. “This election was a tsunami. It was not won by any one state or by any one election. And therefore, I think it’s important to look at the national numbers, which indicate that the Jewish vote is unchanged from where it was in the last midterm election.”

Soifer pointed to a GBAO Strategies exit poll scheduled for release Thursday, showing that 72% of Jewish voters supported Democratic candidates. That is nearly identical to the 71% who voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 survey also sponsored by J Street. But it is slightly lower than the 74% who supported Democrats in the 2022 midterms and the 77% who backed Joe Biden in 2020.

The results show a complicated picture. Jewish voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic even as some have grown frustrated with the party’s direction on Israel and antisemitism. And any Republican gains among Jewish voters were not enough to overcome the broader Democratic wave.

That was especially clear in Michigan, where El-Sayed, a fierce critic of Israel, defeated Republican Mike Rogers despite concerns among some Jewish Democrats about his views and rhetoric. An exit poll found that 60% of Jewish early voters still supported El-Sayed, while Rogers made some minor gains.

In New York’s 17th Congressional District, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler lost his reelection bid to Democrat Cait Conley, despite receiving overwhelming support in the heavily Hasidic neighborhoods of Rockland County.

Measuring the Jewish vote

Exit polls are not actual vote counts, and the Jewish samples in national surveys are relatively small. Steve Sheffey, a pro-Israel Democratic activist, warned in a Times of Israel essay last year that national polls not specifically designed to measure Jewish voters can produce significantly different results.

The same caution applies when comparing this year’s results with previous elections. Differences in sampling, religious identification and turnout make it hard to measure exactly how many percentage points the Jewish vote has shifted.

Two national surveys conducted earlier this year show Jewish voters remain firmly in the Democratic camp. A September poll by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 71% of Jewish voters planned to support Democrats for Congress, compared with 23% who planned to support Republicans. Another survey, conducted by GBAO Strategies, found Democrats with a 67%-26% lead among Jewish voters. A 2021 poll found that 74% of Jewish voters approved of the way Joe Biden was handling the U.S.-Israel relationship and 68% had planned to vote for Democrats in the 2022 midterms.

JDCA’s Soifer said “widespread speculation” that Jewish Americans may be leaving the Democratic Party “proved to be absolutely false” nationwide. The outcome “was the largest repudiation of a sitting president that we’ve ever seen, and Jewish voters played a role in that,” she said.

Jewish Democrats crossed party lines in Michigan

Still, a stable Democratic majority does not necessarily mean Jewish voters are satisfied with the party.

The Jewish Electorate Institute survey in September found that 35% of Jewish Democrats said the rise of anti-Israel candidates made it harder to identify with their party. Michigan offered one of the clearest tests of whether those concerns could cause Jewish Democrats to cross party lines in particular races without abandoning their party altogether.

The Mercury Public Affairs survey of 482 Jewish voters who cast ballots before Election Day found that, among Jewish voters who said they backed Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024, 23% voted for Rogers this time, and among those who voted for Harris in the presidential election, 18% crossed over to Rogers, while another 11% voted for someone else or skipped the Senate race.

A Republican Jewish Coalition spokesperson pointed to election returns in heavily Jewish precincts as further evidence of a shift. Sam Markstein said unofficial results of Huntington Woods showed a 30-percentage-point shift toward Rogers compared with 2024, while Southfield Township shifted 12.9 points, Birmingham 11.4 points and West Bloomfield Township 7.1 points. The RJC spent $2 million to target the approximately 50,000 Jewish voters in those neighborhoods.

Analysis by Millions of Michiganians, a progressive Super PAC, of 72 precincts with the highest number of Jewish voters, showed El-Sayed receiving 60% of the vote, underperforming the Democratic gubernatorial nominee by just 6.2 percent, with a shift of 1.3 percent compared to 2024.

What comes next?

The larger question is what these results mean for the Democratic Party’s relationship with Jewish Americans.

Soifer acknowledged concerns about the direction of her own party, but maintained, “This election wasn’t about Israel, including for Jewish voters.” She added that the group, along with other liberal Jewish organizations, plans to “play a large role” in helping set the agenda of the new Democratic majorities in Congress.

Nonnegotiable Michigan, a coalition of Michigan rabbis and Jewish Democrats opposing El-Sayed, said in a statement on Wednesday that they hope the party “will govern by reuniting our coalition, delivering for the American people, and rejecting the divisive voices and worldview of those who traffic in antisemitism.”

Other organizations called for continued engagement with leaders in both parties to confront antisemitism and extremism. “We don’t need to agree on everything to know that their partnership will be key to countering antisemitism and protecting democracy,” said Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

Democrats also celebrated major victories by prominent Jewish politicians, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff. Their success could strengthen their standing in the party in shaping the debate over Israel and antisemitism and raise their profiles as possible contenders for the 2028 presidential nomination.

The post Republicans made inroads with Jewish voters. Democrats won anyway. appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — RE’IM, Nova Festival Memorial Site, Israel – Iconic 80s pop star Boy George is in Israel this week. He’s made all the usual stops on a celebrity visit: met with the president, placed a note in the Western Wall and, of course, performed two concerts. But it was his visit to the Nova Festival Memorial Site near Kibbutz Re’im on Tuesday that underscored the main reason for his visit.

An outspoken supporter of Jews and Israel, even as he has faced a backlash from within the music industry, the iconic ’80s pop star said that hearing about the massacre and seeing the site where more than 360 people were killed on Oct. 7, 2023 had only strengthened his convictions.

“I saw what happened on October 7… I was up very early, and I saw it, and it just horrified me,” Boy George told a press conference on Tuesday, following a tour of the memorial with former hostages, survivors and other members of the Tribe of Nova Community Association.

“But what horrified me more was hearing people that have no connection to what happened telling me it wasn’t true, that it was made up, and that I shouldn’t believe it,” he said.

Boy George, a British singer who achieved international fame in the 1980s with Culture Club and hits such as “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” and “Karma Chameleon,” holds a pioneering place in modern pop history. With his androgynous look, Rastafarian-inspired dreadlocks and oversized hats, the white singer challenged conventional ideas about gender and sexuality at a time when doing so could come at a cost.

He countered convention again in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, speaking out on behalf of Jews and Israel when parts of an entertainment industry were calling for boycotts and blacklists of Israeli performers and their allies.

Boy George, 65, told journalists in Israel this week that he had lost long-time friends over his position on Israel, but said he was not particularly troubled by it, because he felt he was doing the right thing.

“I feel odd being thanked for doing what’s just normal,” he said. “Music should make people feel safe, celebrated, and like they belong. That’s the music I want to make.”
The singer said some of the reactions to his support for Israel have been “shocking to me, but also a bit predictable.”

He said that the attacks against him have ranged from bashing his music to calling him “irrelevant,” and even accusing him of being a “Zionist.”

“Until I started getting called a Zionist, I hadn’t really explored what it meant, and then I was like, ‘well, I guess it must be,’” Boy George said. “In the end, I just put a thing up [on social media] saying, ‘I’m a Zionist, get over it.’”

Two incidents this year solidified his support for Jews and Israel. In April, he arrived in the London Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green and witnessed the aftermath of the stabbing of two Jewish men. He later went on British television, tearily condemning the attack and calling for support for “our Jewish community.”

In May, at a travelling exhibit about the Nova attack, he heard the testimony of a young survivor, May Hayat. The 33-year-old Tel Avivian witnessed the murder of two friends before Hamas terrorists set her free.

Moved by Hayat’s story, the singer wrote “We Will Dance Again,” a slogan he borrowed from the Tribe of Nova community. Released on July 26, its lyrics include, “you say genocide / I say war.”

“One of the things I’ve always hated doing is explaining why I’ve written something,” Boy George said of the song, which drew massive criticism from some in the music industry but has become an anthem for Israelis.

“Very often, what I write is sort of personal, a little bit surreptitious, secretive… but I’m afraid with ‘We Will Dance Again,’ there was no secrecy or subtext whatsoever,” he said.

“I kept hearing that word [genocide] over and over and over and obviously, I’ve done a bit of research on the word, and I know it wasn’t the right word and I felt, well, if it’s being bandied about by every single person that I speak to, then maybe I should put it in the song,” he said.

The singer also highlighted another line from the song: “If you’re ever confused / I stand with the Jews.”

The singer said he doubted the song would get airplay, “but it really wasn’t about that… it was about what do I need to do about what I feel deeply inside.”

Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Hayat said she was flattered that Boy George was inspired to write a song after hearing her story, but added that this was precisely why she now devotes her time to telling others what happened on Oct. 7.

“If I was saved and I am still alive, then I have to tell this story for myself and for those who can’t tell their story,” she said. The song “strengthens me in doing what I am doing.”

Boy George said that being at the site of the Nova festival was “very powerful.”
“Obviously, you can see there’s a lot of healing that’s gone on, and that’s really important because an outsider never knows what they’re supposed to feel,” he said, after touring the memorial, which includes photos of each victim, as well as tributes from friends and family.

Boy George was accompanied to the Nova site by Sylvan Adams, president of the World Jewish Congress Israel. Adams, together with the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem and Live Nation Israel. Boy George was accompanied to the Nova site by Sylvan Adams, president of the World Jewish Congress Israel. Adams, together with the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem donated 1,500 concert tickets to Nova survivors and bereaved families so they could attend Saturday night’s concert.

“At a time when too many international artists have chosen to boycott Israel or remain silent in the face of antisemitism, you chose to come,” said Adams. “You used your voice and your international platform to stand with the Jewish people, despite the threats and boycotts. That takes courage. And moral clarity.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post From pop icon to outspoken Zionist: Boy George’s emotional visit to Nova appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — A Wisconsin referendum that would prohibit state and local governments from closing places of worship in response to a declared emergency was rejected in Tuesday’s election by 52% of voters.

The question was raised in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, during which places of worship were subject to public health orders restricting large gatherings. If approved, the Wisconsin Constitution would have gained language prohibiting the state to “order the closure of or forbid gatherings in places of worship in response to a state of emergency at the national, state, or local level, including an emergency related to public health.”

Critics said that the language of the referendum was vague because it did not define what a “place of worship” was, leaving uncertainty over whether it could encompass someone’s home in which religious services are hosted. The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, which opposed the referendum, said the measure is a threat to public health. It added that the law as it stands does not “prevent any person from worshipping God, as such worship can and is practiced on an individual basis in one’s own home during an emergency.”

Rabbi Joel Alter, who leads Milwaukee’s predominant Conservative synagogue Congregation Beth Israel Ner Tamid, said that while he understands the concerns the referendum stemmed from, he voted to reject the prohibition. “I don’t think the state constitution is the way to respond to concerns that people have,” he said. “I would much rather see advisory panels and possibly legislators hold really thoughtful hearings and studies to make recommendations for the next emergency—whether it’s a health emergency or some other emergency—about how to handle houses of worship in the interest of public health.”

The Wisconsin Family Council, a conservative Christian organization, had advocated in favor of the prohibition, saying it would ensure “that your local church is never treated as ‘non-essential’ by the government again.” Other proponents, including a number of local churches, argued that places of worship are “lifelines” during times of crisis, and that closing them is a violation of religious freedom.

Other states—including Kentucky, Oklahoma, Florida and New Hampshire—have adopted similar protections, but the Wisconsin referendum would have offered stronger protections for churches, synagogues and other places of worship than other essential locations, such as schools or grocery stores. Texas adopted a constitutional protection against government restrictions on religious services in 2021.

Because the governor cannot veto a constitutional amendment, the Republican-run state legislature put forth constitutional amendments to bypass the veto of Gov. Tony Evers, who did not run for reelection. Evers vetoed a bill containing similar protections for places of worship in 2021. In addition to the religious freedom referendum, Republican lawmakers also introduced two others, one that would further limit the governor’s partial veto powers, which passed with 51% of voters favoring, and another that could restrict affirmative action and some diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which passed with 56% of the vote.

David Crowley, Democratic governor-elect, said he would vote “no” on all three questions.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

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