Jewish voters in the United States have overwhelmingly backed Barack Obama as their choice for president. According to exit polls, the Illinois senator received an estimated 77 per cent of the Jewish vote in Tuesday’s presidential election, which he won by 53 percent against 47 percent for his Republican challenger John McCain. These numbers were higher even than the 2004 election, when Democratic candidate John Kerry received 74 per cent of the Jewish vote. In 2000, Al Gore received the highest percentage of Jewish votes, with 79 per cent.
Meanwhile, president-elect Obama has chosen a Jewish man to be his White House chief of staff, one of the most influential positions in the new administration. Rahm Emanuel, a former Bill Clinton adviser, is the son of a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who was a member of the Irgun, a militant Zionist group that operated in Palestine between 1931 and 1948. Emanuel served briefly as a civilian volunteer on an Israeli military base during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.
