Political Insider: Hillary Wins Jewish Demcratic Vote in Nevada

If anybody harbored lingering doubts that religion would be a factor in the 2008 presidential election, take a look at this weekend's results from Nevada and South Carolina.

In Nevada's caucuses, exit polls show that winner Hillary Clinton was the overwhelming choice of Jewish Democrats, picking up 67 percent of their votes - the highest proportion of any identified religious group.  Second-place finisher Barack Obama got only 25 percent of the Jewish vote and John Edwards, whose campaign is sinking into the region of negative momentum, got 5 percent.

What factors went into that gap? Race was undoubtedly one, but Democratic insiders say the experience factor loomed larger.  Jewish Democrats know Clinton and don't know Obama, they say; in today's complex environment, that counts for a lot with Jewish voters, who tend to care more than other groups about domestic and foreign policy experience.

Clinton's "ready to lead on day one" theme sells well with Jewish voters, several analysts said this week.

 
But race was a big factor overall;  Clinton won only 14 percent of the black vote, compared to the 83 percent won by Obama.  The Hispanic vote, on the other hand, went overwhelmingly to Clinton, with Obama getting only 26 percent.

Analysts love to talk about black-Jewish friction in politics, but the Nevada results point to a more important divide between Hispanics and African-Americans - the nation's two largest minority groups.

On the Republican side, winner Mitt Romney won an overwhelming 95 percent of the Mormon Republican vote in a state where Mormons comprise about 25 percent of the electorate.

The Jewish Republican vote was too small for exit poll data.

In South Carolina's Republican primary, religion was expected to be a huge factor. It was - but not in the way some analysts predicted.

While Mike Huckabee won 43 percent of that state's big evangelical Republican vote, the former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister won only 14 percent of the non-evangelicals.  And McCain made significant inroads with evangelical voters. 

That wasn't good news for second-place finisher Huckabee, the Iowa surprise winner who hoped to build a successful bid for the nomination on that devout base.

The lesson here: preaching in churches and talking about rewriting the Constitution to reflect Godly principles gets you only so far, even in conservative states like South Carolina.

According to exit polls, South Carolina Republicans said the economy was the most important issue on Saturday, followed by illegal immigration, the war in Iraq and terrorism.

The Jewish vote in South Carolina was too small to register in exit polls.

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