While statistics are sketchy, experts say most Jews voted Republican in presidential elections from about Abraham Lincoln's time until the 1920s.
Lincoln won Jewish support not just for his fight against slavery, but also for rescinding an 1862 order by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant that sought to remove from the Tennessee River Valley all Jews conducting business as peddlers or merchants. It was "the first and only occasion where a specific [U.S.] government action was directed against the Jewish community," according to Steven Windmueller, a scholar at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles.
Jewish loyalties began shifting nationally under the administration of Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who put Louis Brandeis on the Supreme Court, the first Jew named to the court, and took a strong international stand against anti-Semitism and in favor of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.
By the time Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt began to enact his New Deal, with its far-reaching social welfare programs, Jewish voters were among his most loyal constituents.
With just a few exceptions, Jews since then have voted overwhelmingly Democratic.
"They have high education and relatively high income levels. They don't own guns. They're [pro-abortion rights] in overwhelming numbers," said Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council. "They are the quintessential 'blue' American community," he summed up, using the political shorthand from 2000's color-coded election maps.
That year, Bush had a particularly tough time winning Jewish support. Gore made history by picking Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an Orthodox Jew, as his running mate. Bush also put off some Jews by invoking his Christian faith, as both a personal matter and as a guide to policy.
He once said that only people who accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior could enter heaven, but retracted the statement after a 1998 visit to Israel. "I believe that God decides who goes to heaven," he said. "Not George W. Bush."
As president, Bush has made no secret of his faith. He has invoked God in justifying the war with Iraq and pushed to make it easier for religious groups to provide government-funded services. Even though Bush is careful to mention adherents of all faiths, the matter of church-state separation remains a concern for many Jews, Harris and others said.
