Jews vote, wait for news and worry over future of democracy

The nation’s roughly 6 million Jewish voters, many of whom have expressed surging levels of concern over the health of American democracy, were urged to get the polls in Tuesday’s midterm election by a host of organizations.

“Your rabbi wants you to vote,” T’ruah, the liberal association of rabbis, wrote on Twitter.

Jewish voters are likely to be paying attention to races across the country at a time when they have expressed high levels of motivation to participate — 9.3 on a scale of 1 to 10, according to a September poll — and listed the “future of democracy” and abortion as their top issues.

Concerns over democracy have taken center stage since former President Donald Trump’s refusal to recognize the results of the 2020 presidential election and the subsequent riot at the U.S. Capitol. Many Republican candidates running for office across the country have likewise refused to accept the 2020 results as legitimate and have made unfounded claims of mass voter fraud.

Per that September poll, Jews have also expressed a higher level of concern about the election’s potential consequences for American democracy than the general voting public, a majority of whom ranked the economy ranked as their top issue. In contrast, 45% percent of Jewish voters ranked democracy as one of their top two issues, while 38% selected abortion. Only 28% who said “inflation and the economy” were a top priority.

“Jews have it better in America than we’ve had it anywhere else in the diaspora for the last 2,000 years and that’s primarily a function of American democracy,” said Aaron Dorfman, the founder of A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy, which has been recruiting Jewish organizations to join a nonpartisan coalition supporting fair elections.