Opinion: Why do American Jews vote for antisemites like El-Sayed?

JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan S. Tobin asks how so many Jewish voters in Michigan backed Abdul El-Sayed despite a record Tobin describes as open antisemitism — including rationalizing a terrorist attack on a synagogue and Jewish preschool in West Bloomfield.

National midterm exit polling suggested about 68% of Jews voted Democratic, roughly in line with recent cycles. One early-vote survey in Michigan put a majority of Jewish early voters for El-Sayed. Tobin argues politics now fills the role religion once played for many, with liberalism and the Democratic Party treated as faith — and Jewish peoplehood and Israel discarded.

He places El-Sayed among a larger freshman class of Democrats hostile to Israel, including DSA-aligned House winners who opposed the Jewish state's existence. The column is attributed opinion; the vote numbers are Tobin's reading of exit and early-vote surveys.