Kamala Harris has 'overwhelming' support of Jewish voters over Trump: poll

The overwhelming majority of Jewish voters in the US are planning to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris over her Republican opponent Donald Trump, according to a poll released on Monday.

The poll, commissioned by the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA), found that 72 percent of Jewish Americans plan on casting a ballot for current US Vice President Harris, with 25 percent intending to vote for former president Trump.

The poll also shows that Harris would perform better among Jewish voters against Trump than Joe Biden, with 67 percent of those polled supporting the incumbent president compared to 25 percent for the far-right Republican candidate.

Additionally, Harris has a +38 favourability rating among Jewish voters, with Biden’s at +25.

Continuing a trend from Trump’s first time in office, Jewish voters still hold negative attitudes towards the former president and the Republican Party in general, the poll found.

Seventy-six percent of Jews hold an “unfavourable” opinion of Trump and the GOP, while 73% hold a negative opinion of his running mate JD Vance.

In recent times, Trump has attempted to win Jewish votes by launching a series of brash attacks on Jews who support the Democratic Party. In July, he said that any Jew who backs the Democrats is “an absolute fool” who needs “their head examined.”

Trump has attempted to court Jewish voters solely through the lens of support for Israel’s war on Gaza, with him infamously describing Biden in a debate in June as a “bad Palestinian” in an attempt to smear him. Despite Biden and the Democrats’ strong support for Israel as it wages a devastating war on the Palestinian enclave, which many have called genocide, Trump has sought to depict the party as being “pro-Hamas”.

Most recently, Trump claimed to Jewish voters that Israel would be "gone" under a Harris presidency. 

Critics have argued that Trump’s attempts to win Jewish votes by focussing solely on Israel is itself an antisemitic assumption, assuming that all Jews care more about Israel than the US and playing to the “dual loyalty” canard.

The polls seems bears this out, with it finding that most American Jews do not consider policy regarding Israel as a major factor in determining their vote. Of the Jewish voters polled, most rank Israel policy as being less important than “the future of democracy,” the economy, and abortion. On a list of 11 policy priorities, Israel ranks ninth, the poll found.

In fact, on Israel policy, the poll suggests that Jewish Americans are vastly opposed to hawkishness, with a massive 87 percent supporting Biden and Harris’s attempts to “reach an agreement for a ceasefire and hostage release” to stop the war on Gaza.

Despite a rhetorical shift from Harris towards more concern for the humanitarian situation of Palestinians in Gaza, the Vice President has not substantially departed from Biden’s policy of unconditional material support for Israel.