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Obama Wins 70% of Jewish Vote

Al-Monitor's Laura Rozen reports on how President Obama overwhelmingly won the Jewish vote despite Mitt Romney’s campaign claim that he was a better friend to Israel.  
U.S. President Barack Obama greets guests at a Jewish American Heritage Month reception in the East Room of the White House in Washington May 30, 2012. 
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque  (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS)

Democratic and Republican-aligned groups offered conflicting analysis and spin Wednesday to describe how a newly re-elected President Obama fared among the Jewish American electorate in Tuesday’s polls, after a year in which tens of millions of dollars were spent in Republican ad campaigns depicting Obama as having "thrown [Israel] under the bus," as Mitt Romney put it in September. 

Nationwide, Jewish voters went for Obama 70% to 30% for Romney in the 2012 presidential race, according to a survey of 800 Jewish American voters conducted by Gerstein Bacion Agne Strategies for left-leaning J Street. That compared with 74% of the Jewish vote going for Obama in his 2008 race against Republican John McCain. Obama fared similarly among Jewish voters in two key swing states: Florida, where Obama this year won 68% of the Jewish vote, and Ohio (69%), according to the J Street/GBA poll.

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