Republicans Carry Over 90% of Orthodox Jewish Vote

On a Largely Blue Island, an Exception

…Even this most Democratic of cities has its outliers and intrigues. A precinct-by-precinct examination of the ways New Yorkers voted this month revealed some anomalous, and often telling, outcroppings, including pockets of red-state America tucked inside fields of blue.

Take a four-square-block slice of Gravesend, Brooklyn, a warren of high-priced residences dotted with Sephardic temples and yeshivas that happens to be the deepest single bloc of Republican support in all five boroughs. On Election Day, 97 percent of the voters there supported Mr. Romney, who beat Mr. Obama 133 votes to 3. Mr. Romney won unanimously in six other precincts, but altogether, 10 people voted in those precincts.

On Monday in Gravesend, Jewish men in black hats, clutching prayer books, strolled past manicured lawns and driveways filled with Porsches and Mercedes-Benzes. A Maserati was parked across the street from a rabbinical school on Avenue S. It is a district of families and business owners, residents said, where religious values are often as deeply felt as economic ones.

Mr. Romney enjoyed strong support from a range of neighborhoods with large populations of Orthodox Jews, regardless of income level.

Mr. Romney won more than 90 percent of the votes in many precincts in the Borough Park and Sheepshead Bay neighborhoods in Brooklyn and in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens. Some Romney supporters from those areas were surprised to learn their candidate had performed so well.

… (NYT 11/23/12)