Jewish voters in 1924

[darklordoftech]

This website (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-voting-record-in-u-s-presidential-elections) says that in 1924, 51% of Jewish voters voted for Davis. How did Davis win a majority of Jewish voters while opposing child labor laws and anti-lynching laws and while La Follete was running?

[RINO Tom]

I mean, LaFollette did pretty well (22%), almost as well as Coolidge (27%).  Also, Davis' "conservative" reputation seems to stem mostly from his anti-lynching views (not sure this is "conservative," as plenty of conservatives - such as Coolidge and Harding - supported anti-lynching laws while many otherwise liberal politicians, specifically in the South, didn't) and his support for states' rights (I think history has made it clear that states' rights doesn't really mean anything ideologically, and it is a rallying cry for all kinds of ideologies ... for example, many Democratic-run states right now are trying to protect their "state's rights" from the Trump Administration), but it's not like he was one of those Democrats who was truly a conservative who had to run as a Democrat because of where he lived.

Davis helped author anti-trust laws while in Congress, he was very against prohibition (this is another issue that is hard to paint as "conservative vs. liberal," but many of his opponents on it were very culturally conservative New England Republicans), he was a leading voice for impeachment of Robert Archibald and he was, to my knowledge, squarely in the tradition of Wilsonian thought on most things.  Considering Wilson won 55% of the Jewish vote, per your link, I'm sure that kind of helped Davis, as well.

The short answer, though, seems to be that Jews were just a pretty loyally Democratic group.  Democrats had traditionally represented the more "oppressed" groups in society such as the poor and immigrants, and Jews fell into that category due to a lot of anti-Jewish bigotry.

[SingingAnalyst]

Very interesting website, especially the data from 1916 - 1928.

To say there was a lot of anti-Jewish bigotry is if anything an understatement, considering the persecution Jews experienced in both Europe and America, the difficulty Jews had in being admitted to professional societies, restrictive covenants that kept Jews from owning property in certain neighborhoods (such as virtually the entire eastside of Detroit), the openly anti-Semitic views held by Americans such as Henry Ford and Father Coughlin, the anti-Semitic theological views held by all but the most liberal Protestants, anti-Semitism in the Catholic liturgy pre-Vatican II, etc.

Like most older statistics (like the data on Polish-Americans I have referred to elsewhere in this forum) the exact numbers may be taken with a grain of salt; however, certain patterns emerge:

Jewish support for the GOP collapsed from 1920 to 1924, while support for the Dems skyrocketed from 19% for Cox in 1920 to 72% for Al Smith in 1928. Debs got 38% of the Jewish vote? May be a bit high, but Wallace's 15% in 1948 is certainly believable.

Note, too, the sharp drop in Jewish support for Reagan from 1980 to 1984, neoconservative mythology of Reagan's popularity among Jews notwithstanding.

[Mr. Smith]

Why Bush Sr did better than Reagan either time mystifies me

[uti2]

Why Bush Sr did better than Reagan either time mystifies me

Bush Sr. had a secular platform, less flirtation with the religious right.

The 1980 vote was about getting Carter out of office.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

The best guess I have is that by 1924, most American Jews were poor, unskilled immigrants from eastern Europe, or their descendants.  Before that, most of them came from wealthier backgrounds in places like France and Germany, and they probably made up most of the vote for Coolidge and/or Lafollette that year.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

The short answer, though, seems to be that Jews were just a pretty loyally Democratic group.  Democrats had traditionally represented the more "oppressed" groups in society such as the poor and immigrants, and Jews fell into that category due to a lot of anti-Jewish bigotry.

Actually, for most of the late 19th and early 20th century, Jews voted pretty strongly for the GOP, IIRC.  I had always thought they only switched to the Democrats in response to the New Deal, in the same way blacks did.  But by 1924, most of them were probably involved in machine politics and/or came from eastern European peasant stock, which made them a particular target for nativists.  Either that, or there's a typo on the website and it meant to say that Coolidge or Lafollette got 51% of the Jewish vote.

The same site mentions that Debs got over a third of the Jewish vote in 1920, which suggests that a lot of them were probably socialists and thus more favorable to Democrats.

[mianfei]

This website (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-voting-record-in-u-s-presidential-elections) says that in 1924, 51% of Jewish voters voted for Davis. How did Davis win a majority of Jewish voters while opposing child labor laws and anti-lynching laws and while La Follette was running?

Almost certainly that was because – and likely only because – Davis was a pro-League of Nations internationalist, whereas Coolidge and La Follette were both opposed to the League.

People tend to forget that, whilst Davis got a mere 22 percent of votes outside antebellum slave states and Oklahoma, he did improve on Cox by 3.68 percent in Rhode Island (his second strongest antebellum free state), and 2.18 percent in New York, whilst doing better than Cox in no other non-Southern state. In fact, despite a strong vote for La Follette (28.71 percent in the Bronx, 20.20 percent in Brooklyn, 18.71 percent in Manhattan), Davis gained on Cox thus in the five New York boroughs:

• New York (Manhattan) – Davis gained 10.43 percent on Cox
• Bronx – Davis gained 9.20 percent on Cox
• Richmond (Staten Island) – Davis gained 8.87 percent on Cox
• Kings (Brooklyn) – Davis gained 5.99 percent on Cox
• Queens – Davis gained 5.34 percent on Cox
• in only two other counties in New York – Albany and Clinton – did Davis gain more than 3 percent on Cox, and 45 counties in New York gave him a lower percentage than Cox.