In his victory speech, President Donald Trump singled out constituencies traditionally associated with Democrats who swung toward him on Election Day: Black voters, women, Hispanics, and Arab and Muslim Americans.
He did not mention Jews, a demographic who he said before the election would be blamed if he did not win. Jews traditionally vote in substantial majorities for Democrats, and did again on Tuesday.
“This campaign has been so historic in so many ways,” Trump said in Wednesday’s early hours, speaking in Florida at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, near his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“We’ve built the biggest, the broadest, the most unified coalition,” he said. “They’ve never seen anything like it in all of American history. They’ve never seen any — young and old, men and women, rural and urban. And we had them all helping us tonight. When you think, I mean, I was looking at it, I was watching it, they had some great analysis of the people that voted for us. Nobody has ever seen anything like that came from.
“They came from all quarters,” Trump continued, “union, non -union, African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Arab American, Muslim American. We had everybody. And it was beautiful. It was a historic realignment, uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense.”
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Many of the groups Trump cited, including African Americans, Hispanics, and Arab and Muslim Americans, showed movement toward him in polls before the election and in exit polls after. Despite his own pro-Israel bona fides, Trump cultivated Muslim and Arab Americans in Michigan, a state where they have substantial populations and which he won, by targeting the communities’ disaffection with his rival Vice President Kamala Harris over her support for Israel.
Harris’ concession speech
In her concession speech, Harris said she conceded to Trump, but also alluded to his failure to ever recognize his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results,” she said, speaking to a crowd of tearful supporters at her alma mater, Washington D.C.’s Howard University, a historically Black university.
She said she would not abandon her fight to advance her agenda. “This is not a time to throw up our hands,” she said. “This is a time to roll up our sleeves.”
According to exit polls, Jews appeared to hew to their longstanding tradition of voting for Democrats in percentages between 65% and 80%. One exit poll had Harris garnering 77% of the Jewish vote, another had her at 71% and a post-vote analysis estimated Harris’s share at 67%.
“Jewish voters are the only segment of the electorate where Trump did not make meaningful inroads,” Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a tweet. “Despite unprecedented @GOP efforts to divide us, we voted our values.”
A Republican Jewish Coalition spokesman said that Jewish votes helped put Trump over the top in a number of swing states, without providing evidence.
“Jewish Americans were a major part of the winning coalition for President Donald J. Trump’s historic victory last night — including record-setting levels of support in key battleground states like Nevada — which hadn’t been won by a Republican in 20 years — as well as Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania,” Sam Markstein, the RJC spokesman, said. News outlets had yet to call Nevada and Arizona for Trump, although he was leading 52%-47% in both states with most of the vote counted.
“The pro-Israel Jewish vote matters, which is why RJC and President Trump made a concerted effort to move even more Jewish Americans to the GOP in this election, hosting major events with the Jewish community across the nation,” Markstein said.
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