Yes, There are Politically Conservative Jews Out There
In the spring of 2022, the Tikvah Fund’s annual New York conference made national news when the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan — a facility that deliberately overlooks the harbor of New York with Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty in the distance — was said to have banned Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis from the event. The location of the event was moved and went on as planned but prompted many to write me and others to publicly ask: Are there really that many politically conservative Jews?
The answer is yes; significant numbers of Jews today are politically conservative.
In fact, there have been numerous assumptions and misunderstandings for decades about Jewish political patterns in the United States including ideas such as Jews being universally liberal, that they vote for Democratic candidates without regard to their self-interest, and that Israel is their most important issue. Most of these ideas are simply incorrect and Jews in American are anything by ideologically monolithic; though there are deep historical reasons for having deeply historically liberal roots. Herb Weisberg has found that many Jews fail to, “share the same self-interest or the same values.” However, it is understandable why with social media and significant levels of political engagement on the progressive left that generates substantial attention many do believe that Jews today are activist liberals without much of a conservative side.
Newly compiled data from the Survey Center on American Life allows us to look at Jewish ideological preferences over the past two decades the monolithic myth is quickly shattered and this is worth noting with the 2022 midterm and 2024 Presidential elections on the horizon.
With respect to being on the ideological right, the data reveal that the number of Jews who identify as either conservative or very conservative has remained fairly steady from 1999 through 2021 with a small increase of a few points from the high teens two decades ago to the low 20s today. As a general finding, roughly 1 in 5 Jews identifies as conservative and this has been consistent for decades even if conservatives tend to make far less noise than those on the left.
In contrast, there has been some real movement when among liberals and independents over the past two decades. In general, more Jews have been liberal identifiers but there have been 10-plus point swings. In the late 1990s, for instance, there were notably more moderates than liberals (51 percent compared to 29 percent) and that figure has swung significantly over time. In 2008, 52 percent of Jews identified as liberal with just 30 percent stating that they were moderate. In 2020, in contrast, the numbers of moderates trumped liberals with 42 percent of Jews identifying at moderate and 39 as liberal. While conservatives have remained fairly stable, there are really significant numbers of Jews in the center who move regularly from the center to the left and back again and tend to be fairly vocal about their politics.
Putting these data into a larger context and comparing the trend of Jewish Americans to the American polity, on the whole, Jews do indeed look different; they are more liberal and independent but conservatives do exist.
As for the nation as a whole over the same period, American ideological preferences have shifted a bit but have generally been far more stable and consistent compared to the Jewish population. Consider liberals; only about 1 in 5 Americans state that they are either liberal or very liberal over the past twenty years and the figure has barely moved more than a few points. As for conservatives and moderates, roughly forty percent of the people are moderates and forty percent are conservative. There is slight movement in particular years where moderates or conservatives may be slightly more numerous, but the movement is insignificant as best.
These trend data may surprise many given the nature of the political scene today: liberals are generally the minority in the nation with conservatives and independents each outnumbering liberals by a ratio of about 2 to 1. This is hard to accept as it often appears that liberals are so noticeable but that is generally the case as liberals tend to organize and make a lot of noise along various media channels relative to their size. There are more liberals within the Jewish community and they have been vocal, active, and organized thus helping reinforce myths about the demographic and political leanings of the Jewish community today. But it would be a real mistake to overlook a fifth of the Jewish population who holds appreciably different political and social views as we enter an election season where some districts and races are tight and small numbers of votes can change outcomes; there are conservative Jews and the Jewish community should not be viewed as a liberal block whatsoever.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
