A correspondent writes:
I recently read your book on American voting. Throughout the book, I was struck by the fact that there was almost no analysis or consideration of the Jewish factor in the phenomena and paradoxes that you ponder. As a (Jewish) doctoral student who studies Jewish intellectual productions and political patterns and proclivities since the 1850s, both in the United States and elsewhere, I could not help but think that the Jewish factor should go at least some way toward explaining why rich states like New York and California vote Democrat and why rich voters in rich states, although tending Republican, are less likely to do so than in poor red states, where almost no Jews live and where there is limited Jewish influence in the local media, academia, politics, and intellectual culture. After all, in states like New York and California, I would be surprised if Jews were not a large proportion of the upper-class as well as an even larger proportion of the upper-class who vote Democrat and the journalists who promote various forms of liberal ideology. Jews are a small group, but influential in their areas of concentration. Further, their political orientation and behaviour has been anomalous for decades and does not clearly follow trends in the wider gentile society (this being the focus of my own research). As to why the trends that you study between blue-states and red-states have emerged clearly since the 1980s, I wonder to what extent wealthy white Protestants, a mainstay of the Republican party, were more likely after the Second World War to leave areas like New York or Los Angeles where Jews are such a significant part of the affluent and influential, and thereby to reveal tendencies that were present yet not as noticeable. I recognize that these considerations are likely insufficient as a full explanation, but I intuit that they are possibly of some importance.
Funny timing to get this just around when I saw the Podhoretz book. Anyway, I think my correspondent might have a point. Jews can’t be making the difference just by numbers—Connecticut, for example, is only 3% Jewish—but there is certainly a large Jewish influence in east-coast and big-city culture. And, meanwhile, many of the rich Protestants have either moved away or switched to the Democratic Party. I’m not sure how to put this all together, but it’s an interesting point.