‘Jewish Week’: Bloomberg’s Jewish Vote Skyrocketed in ’09

Bloomberg at New York's Veterans Day parade yesterday.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

This week’s Jewish Week notes that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg received three-quarters of the city’s Jewish vote in his surprisingly narrow third-term victory last week, representing a huge increase in his Jewish tally since his first reelection, in 2005, which the paper pegs at 53 percent. This means that “extensive spending on campaign offices and staff, including Yiddish and Russian translators in Jewish communities … was well spent,” says the paper. We’re a little bit less convinced. The Jewish Week cites a New York Times exit poll for the 2009 statistic, and, sure enough, the Times data shows that 75 percent of New York’s Jews voted for Bloomberg. But the Jewish Week doesn’t provide any source for 2005 number. So we did some research, and we found a Pace University exit poll from four years ago. How’d Bloomberg do then? According to Pace, he got 72 percent of the Jewish vote. Which means all the “extensive spending” to reach Jewish voters netted the mayor only an additional 3 percent of them.

Big Jewish Turnout for Bloomberg [JWeek]
Profile of New York City Voters [NYT]
New York City Mayoral Election Study [Pace]