79% of US Jews voted for Kamala Harris, according to largest preliminary exit poll

With some US Jews feeling alienated from the left and others all-in on the right due to support for Israel, some have speculated that Donald Trump could post an unusually strong showing among Jewish voters.

Initial exit polls suggest that is not the case. The National Election Pool, which produces an exit poll for a consortium of major news organizations, has found that 79% of Jews say they voted Democratic, compared to 21% who voted Republican.

Edison Research, which conducts the national pool poll, surveyed voters in 10 states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. (It did not survey voters in New York or California, which are home to the largest Jewish populations and also reliably vote Democratic by wide margins.)

It does not immediately release details about how many voters were surveyed and cautions that the results may change as polling continues and results are adjusted to reflect the real vote tallies, a process called weighting that is a standard component of survey methodology.

If accurate, the National Election Pool’s result would be the lowest proportion of Jewish votes for a Republican presidential candidate in 24 years.

But that’s a big if: Exit polls are notoriously unreliable, with famous examples of polls failing to reflect the real results of elections.

Some have shifted in methodology as the proportion of voters casting ballots in person on Election Day has fallen over time. And like all polls, they can also reflect the partisan bent of their pollsters.

Fox News, which is right-leaning but has a reputation for reliable polling, has conducted its own Election Day “voter analysis” that it says solved some of the problems in traditional exit polling. It finds that 67% of Jews voted for Harris, compared to 31% for Trump. The poll still finds that Jews voted for Harris at higher rates than members of any other religion.

Both the Fox News poll and the National Election Pool ask voters about their opinions on Israel. The Fox News poll finds that 56% of Trump voters strongly or somewhat support “continuing aid to Israel in the war against Hamas and Hezbollah,” while 58% of Harris voters strongly or somewhat oppose doing so.

The National Election Pool survey asks voters whether they think US support for Israel is too strong, not strong enough or just right. Voters are evenly split among the categories, with Democrats making up 68% of those who say US support for Israel is too strong and Republicans making up 81% of those who say it is not strong enough.