ABSTRACT
In 1948 and 1980 the Jewish Democratic vote was shared respectively by Henry Wallace and John Anderson, each of whom carried approximately 15-20% of the Jewish vote. If Jews in New York had divided their votes evenly between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in 1976 instead of casting 80% of their ballots for Carter, Ford would have won New York State and, with it, the presidential election. In elections from the Civil War through 1924, Jews usually aligned with the Republicans, the party of Lincoln, but in 1928 they were drawn to the Democratic banner by the liberal Catholic New Yorker, A1 Smith. Among all voters in 1988, pocketbook voting was very much in evidence, as the likelihood of supporting the Democrats declined steadily from the lower to the higher income brackets. According to a national survey of Jews and gentiles conducted in 1988, one-quarter of all white Americans, Jew or gentile, think of themselves as political Independents.
