With less than a week to go before Election Day and with nearly a third of votes cast through absentee ballots or early voting, Trump has an edge in one state, a new poll shows – Israel.
Home to nearly a quarter of a million American Jews, Israel has one of the largest concentrations of American citizens living overseas.
According to a new poll by iVoteIsrael and KEEVOON Global Research, GOP nominee Donald Trump appears poised to win among Americans living Israel, beating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton 49% to 44%., with an additional 2% supporting Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.
The survey questioned 1,140 American citizens living in Israel who say they cast absentee ballots in the election. They were selected from the iVoterIsrael’s email database.
According to figures provided by iVoterIsrael, the number of absentee voters in Israel plummeted from 2012, when more than 80,000 Americans cast their ballots through iVoterIsrael, while just 15,000 did so this year, with an additional 15,000 using the US Vote Foundation.
Trump’s margin of victory also represents a decline from the traditional levels of support enjoyed by Republican presidential candidates from Americans in Israel.
While American Jews lean strongly to the left – the last Republican to win the Jewish vote being Warren Gamaliel Harding in 1920 – American expatriates in Israel have overwhelmingly favored GOP candidates. While President Obama defeated Mitt Romney in the 2012 general election 51% to 47%, Romney crushed Obama among voters in Israel, 84% to 14%.
In 2008 McCain won by an only slightly narrower margin, picking up 76% of votes cast by absentee voters in Israel.
While Americans in Israel overwhelmingly backed McCain and Romney, this year voters in Israel were more clearly polarized along religious lines.
Among haredi voters, Trump won 85%, while Clinton dominated with secular American Jews in Israel, capturing 75% of their votes. Non-haredi Religious Zionist Jews also strongly backed Trump, with 63% voting for the GOP nominee. Jews who defined themselves as “traditional” narrowly favored Clinton, with 54% saying they voted for the Democrat.
The majority of the ballots sent by respondents went to states unlikely to determine the outcome of the election, with New York, New Jersey, and California being the largest recipients of Israeli absentee ballots.
But some states, like Florida and Pennsylvania also received a significant portion of the overseas ballots from Israel.