A number of commentators have noted that Jews in Western countries are increasingly voting for conservative parties and candidates; American Jews, however, have maintained their overwhelming preference for liberals. Evelyn Gordon argues that this is not because American Jews are different from other Jews, but because America is different from other liberal democracies:
[N]on-Jewish Americans are overwhelmingly pro-Israel. That certainly isn’t the case in Europe. And as an annual BBC poll shows, it isn’t even true in Canada and Australia, whose current conservative governments are staunchly pro-Israel. Consequently, Democratic politicians [in the U.S.] are rarely as anti-Israel as their counterparts overseas, because being anti-Israel is still bad politics in America . . . Nor does the American left’s animus toward Israel spill over into blatant anti-Semitism as often as it does in, say, Europe. So, for now, liberal American Jews still feel as if they can support the left without having to repudiate their Zionism or their Judaism—something that’s increasingly no longer possible overseas.
But even in America, that may not be true for long. . . . Thus, if American Jewish liberals don’t want to go the way of their counterparts overseas, . . . they need to mount an urgent campaign to convince their own political camp that any good liberal should also be pro-Israel. That’s far from an impossible case to make, since it has the advantage of being true. . . . But conservatives can’t do the job for them.
Read more on Evelyn Gordon: http://evelyncgordon.com/as-jews-worldwide-go-conservative-how-long-will-u-s-jews-buck-the-trend/