Jewish voters in New York are abandoning the Democratic Party at a historic rate, according to polling cited Wednesday by CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten, who pointed to Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul as the drag on the party’s standing.
Enten, speaking with co-anchor John Berman, said New York has the largest Jewish share of the electorate of any state in the country, and that the numbers moving against Democrats there are striking.
In the governor’s race, Enten said the current Democrat margin among Jewish voters sits at just 13 points. That’s a collapse from Hochul’s 51-point lead in 2022, and from Andrew Cuomo’s 55-point advantage in 2018.
“We’re talking about a swing here … of 38 points downward towards the Republicans when it comes to Jewish voters,” Enten said.
The House generic ballot tells the same story. The Democrat lead among Jewish voters has shrunk from 49 points in 2022 to just 13 points this year.
“Their lead is absolutely tumbled into the Hudson River among Jewish voters,” Enten said.
Asked by Berman what’s behind the shift, Enten pointed squarely at Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist mayor of New York City, whose positions on Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have alienated much of the city’s Jewish population. Enten put Mamdani’s net favorability among Jewish voters at minus 23 — roughly 31 points worse than his standing with New York voters overall.
A September Siena University poll backs up the trend. Among Jewish voters, Republican Bruce Blakeman led Hochul 46% to 43% in the governor’s race — even though Hochul held a nine-point lead statewide. Jewish voters also favored Blakeman over Hochul on handling “undocumented immigrants,” 48% to 43%, and viewed Mamdani unfavorably by a wide margin, 64% to 33%.
The numbers line up with what happened at the ballot box in November, when Mamdani won the New York City mayor’s race but exit polls showed he carried only about a third of the city’s Jewish vote. Cuomo, running as an independent, took roughly 63% of that vote.
Enten also flagged New York’s 17th Congressional District, currently held by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), a seat Kamala Harris won in 2024 by less than a percentage point. The prediction market Kalshi currently gives Lawler a 39% chance of holding the heavily Jewish district — a number Enten said could rise if Jewish voters keep breaking away from Democrats.
“They may just save Mike Lawler’s seat in Congress for him,” Enten said.
