Diegetics

Jews are a minority even in states where they are heavily represented. Jews really only matter in New York, California and Florida. Florida is a swing state, California and New York are not. The big reason why losing Jews is a problem is fundraising. Obama is not having any trouble fundraising. So more or less the Jews aren't relevant to his re-election campaign anywhere except for Florida where the margins might be slim enough that some tens of thousands of Jews actually matter.

People reading something about the 9th Congressional District into a national election clearly and obviously do not comprehend the first thing about New York Demographics. They do not realize that these Orthodox religious Jews are heavily clustered into particular neighborhoods and thus can dominate a Congressional district in a way that doesn't apply to the wider state. Conservative Jews are a big deal in the 9th Congressional District, they are a big deal in the 12th Congressional District. The 12 is largely Kings County (Brooklyn) with some in New York County (Manhattan) and the 9th I believe straddles Kings and Queens. They are also a big influence in Rockland County. The highest concentration of Conservative Jews in Manhattan would be in the 14th Congressional district which encompasses the Upper East Side and a large proportion of Western Queens. They don't have enough pull in the 15th Congressional District, or don't have the desire, to remove Charlie Rangel.

A lot of New York Jews are not observant at all, and that is your Liberal base amongst Jews, the reformed and non-religious types. Even highly religious reformed Jews tend to be staunch Democrats. The strongest Democrats I know in New York tend to be Jews.

I am not sure what voter turnout is like amongst Conservative Jews. I know they tend to vote as a bloc, but I am not sure what voter turnout is like in that population. Voter turnout as proportion of population tends to be rather low, so it's very easy to dominate a Congressional district if you can get 60,000 people to vote as a bloc, which is one of those properties of Orthodox/Conservative Jews.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_J ... on_centers

It'll be interesting to see what happens if Dominionist Rick Perry gets up there, and how the Jews go with that.

So while the voting habits of Orthodox Jews is highly interesting in terms of Congressional politics. It's not that highly relevant in Presidential politics where their money is not needed, because they are a minority constituency that can only sway elections in a handful of districts nationwide. The districts to watch for Presidential politics are Broward, Dade and Palm Beach counties. The New York ones don't matter because Obama is going to take New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/us/po ... votes.html

This lays it out. Obama could lost a few percentage points amongst Jewish voters, but will still take a majority of the Jewish vote. The 'Obama is anti-Israel' meme is complete and total bullshit and most of those spreading it know it's a straight up lie.