Early election results of Americans living in Israel show a big advantage for John McCain. I don’t expect these numbers, courtesy of DK, to hold for American Jews living at home—the latest poll gave Obama 74 percent of those voters and many Israel-firsters were already voting for McCain. But exit poll data is thus far surprising:
A startling 76 percent of those polled said that they had voted for John McCain. This contrasts sharply with pre-election polls of American Jews in the U.S., which indicate a strong preference for Obama.
The exit poll findings of American voters in Israel are all the more surprising because less than one in four were registered Republicans, and 46% of registered Democrats living in Israel said they had crossed party lines to vote McCain. By contrast, the Republican crossover to Obama was minimal – just 2%.
The votes are significant as almost half of the 42,000 registered U.S. voters living in Israel come from key swing states including Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
In the 2000 and 2004 elections, Israel had the third-largest group of American voters abroad, after Canada and Britain.
A Rabin Center for Israel Studies poll published Monday by Ynet also found that Israeli, if they could vote in U.S. elections, would choose McCain over Obama by a 12-percentage-point margin. Surprisingly, Palestinians also prefer McCain.
