In winning the US Senate seat from New York last Tuesday, First Lady Hillary Clinton defied political truism that a Democrat candidates needs two-thirds of the Jewish vote to win a statewide campaign, political experts say.
Clinton won the Senate seat with just 53 percent of the state's Jewish electorate, according to an exit poll conducted by Voter News Service.
By comparison, Chuck Schumer elected to the senate in 1998 got 76 percent of the Jewish vote, the poll showed, while outgoing Democratic Senator Patrick Moynihan tallied 87 percent in 1994.
The poll indicated that Clinton's support was so broad that she could have won with only 10 percent of the Jewish vote.
New York's Jewish community was somewhat suspicious of Clinton because of her past comments in support of a Palestinian state, as well as her failure to rebut anti-Israeli comments made in her presence by the wife of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"All of her fighting back paid off," said Ester Fuchs, a political science professor at Columbia University. "There is a majority of Jews who didn't believe all the negative stuff" -- NEW YORK (AFP)
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