Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out in early October, a substantial amount of media attention has focused on how Jewish voters will respond to the crisis. While Jewish voters support the Democratic Party and disapprove of Trump, they are more likely to approve of Trump’s stance on Israel. Although the Republican Party is more doggedly pro-Israel than the Democratic Party, President Joe Biden is widely regarded as a pro-Israel president. While the United States Census does not collect data on religious affiliations and thus lacks official statistics on the Jewish population, the Berman Jewish Data Bank gathers detailed information regarding the Jewish population in the U.S. An analysis of Jewish voters' direct influence on American politics reveals that their impact is relatively modest. This is attributed not only to their status as a numerically small community but also to the inefficient geographic dispersion of this population across the country.
The “Tipping Point State”
While voters in all fifty states will flock to the polls on Election Day next year, only those in nine states will have a realistic chance to affect who wins the presidential election. The disproportionate influence of the nine battleground states is due to their status as potential "tipping-point states." The concept of a "tipping-point state" is understood as a counterfactual scenario, assuming a strong (perfect) correlation in voting outcomes across all states. It posits that if the national vote margin were adjusted without altering the relative ranking of states by their vote margins, the tipping-point state would be identified as the one where a change in the winning candidate at the state level leads to a change in the overall national election winner. In essence, it's the state that, when a candidate wins its electoral votes, effectively secures their victory by pushing them over the required majority of 269 electoral votes.
Tipping-point states, which hold significant sway in national elections, can be explained through two key factors. First, a state's likelihood of being a tipping point increases when its political makeup closely resembles the nation as a whole, placing it in a pivotal, middle-ground position. Second, the size of a state's population matters, as larger states carry more electoral weight and are more likely to flip the outcome of an election.
It's important to note that while many focus on the first factor, the second factor—population size—is just as important. For example, a large and moderately competitive state like Florida has a similar likelihood of being a tipping point as a smaller but intensely competitive state like Nevada, especially this long before the election when relative state partisanship is uncertain. On a per-voter basis, of course, Nevada is substantially more likely to be the tipping point state than Florida.
To forecast the Tipping Point State in the 2024 presidential election, the author used a detailed model that analyzed demographic data and past election results at the county level to predict state-level outcomes. Combined with a Monte Carlo simulation, this approach determined the likelihood of each state being the tipping point in the election.
Demographic Amplification of the Electoral College
The Electoral College not only introduces a partisan distortion, where the candidate with the most overall votes may not always emerge victorious, but it also creates a stochastic impact on the influence of various ethnic groups in determining the outcome of the U.S. presidency. Since the majority of votes in the 2024 Presidential Election will be effectively meaningless, demographic groups who tend to live in these 41 non-battleground states are less meaningful for candidates to persuade relative to their frequency in the nation as a whole. Democrats and Republicans evolve in their strengths among various demographic groups, reflecting the shifting dynamics of U.S. politics, with some dominating trends detailed in a couple of my previous pieces. In the 2016 election, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan voters played a crucial role, as their shift toward Trump was pivotal in determining the election's outcome. These states are characterized by a distinctive demographic profile, marked by a significantly higher proportion of white residents and greater high school graduation rates but lower bachelor's degree attainment rates than the national average. President Trump's disproportionate success in swaying white working-class voters in these key states led to him securing a hundred more electoral votes than Mitt Romney, even though he only reduced the losing margin by 1.8% compared to Romney's performance.
Jews Don’t Happen to Live in the Battleground States
Jewish voters are one of the demographic groups most strongly affected by the asymmetric demographic distortions caused by the electoral college, as their electoral influence is sizably decreased by the current slate of battleground states. According to the outlined analysis, the average non-Jewish voter will be 1.6x as important as the average Jewish voter in deciding the 2024 Presidential election, based on each person’s probability to vote in the tipping-point state.
To rationalize this distortion further, imagine you are a Joe Biden/Donald Trump and are given two choices: convert (a) 1,000 random Jewish voters or (b) 624 random non-Jewish voters from supporting the opposing candidate to vote for you. Your first thought is, of course, to accept Option A since you flip far more voters, which seems better. Having considered the detailed analysis provided, it is evident that Option B is the more strategic choice for your campaign, given the advantageous distribution of these voters across crucial battleground states. Due to their relatively small size as a voting bloc, Jews already do not receive many targeted appeals from candidates. This trend is likely to intensify as the described phenomenon worsens.
The phenomenon described has only emerged recently but is anticipated to escalate significantly by the 2032 Presidential Election. By then, it is anticipated that the voting power of an average Jewish person will likely be reduced to less than half of that held by an average non-Jewish voter. Three significant state partisan changes will affect the “tipping-point” landscape over the next decade, the aggregate of which will certainly hurt Jewish representation.
Texas (0.6% Jewish, 40 Electoral Votes, becoming more important)
Texas is substantially less Jewish than the nation as a whole. As the state becomes the primary battleground in national elections (thanks to the sheer size of the 40 Electoral Votes prize), the electoral influence of Jewish voters will diminish further.
Florida (3.0% Jewish, 30 Electoral Votes, becoming less important)
Broward County and Palm Beach County are two of the most Jewish places in America, and Florida also contains a substantial Jewish community along the state’s West Coast (Tampa, Sarasota, and Cape Coral). As Florida moves to the right, its chances to be the Tipping Point State are substantially lower. As Texas supplants Florida as the nation's main electoral battleground, Jewish voters will become less valuable.
Ohio (1.3% Jewish, 17 Electoral Votes, becoming less important)
Cleveland is home to a moderately sized Jewish community, while Columbus and Cincinnati also have notable Jewish communities, albeit smaller in comparison. Sure, Ohio is less Jewish than the nation as a whole, but it is more Jewish than Texas. The shift of the battleground to Texas will lead to a decrease in the influence of Jewish voters.
Full Methodology
To forecast the tipping-point state in 2024, it's important to predict how each state’s partisan lean (the state’s partisan composition relative to the nation's whole) will change between 2020 and 2024. The author predicted the 2024 presidential election results at the county level for maximum accuracy, later aggregating these into statewide results. The analysis included a beta regression model to form vote expectations based on demographic data (including race, age, gender, educational attainment, population density, and income level), given that demographic modeling has been highly predictive (coef. Pr(>|z|) < 2e-16) of shifts in recent presidential elections. These demographic projections are combined with past election results to formulate a final expectation for mean state vote share under a neutral National Political Environment (NPE). This vote share expectation is converted into a probability distribution, drawing the variance from historical state trends (a “trend” is similar to a “shift” but controls for changes in the NPE) in previous presidential elections. The author performed a Monte Carlo analysis with a sample size N = 40000 to determine the probability that each state is the tipping point. The tipping-point state was determined using post-reapportionment electoral vote shares, assuming that Republicans win the presidency in the event of a 269-269 EV tie.