Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have reason to allow their New York state of mind to coast for another week or so — the next set of contests on April 26 echo the demographics that spurred them to victory in New York.
Large Jewish communities in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Connecticut could play the same role in Clinton’s path to inevitability that they likely played in New York, bolstering her bid to secure the Democratic nomination and sideline the campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The former secretary of state grabbed a daunting lead over Sanders with an easy victory April 19 in the New York City area, where much of the state’s Jewish population lives.
The Jewish senator may have hurt himself among Jewish voters when he clashed with Clinton on Israel during a debate last week in Brooklyn. Sanders challenged Clinton to show more evenhandedness to the Palestinians and to criticize the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Also likely not helping: His hiring then firing of Simone Zimmerman as his Jewish outreach director within a single week after Facebook posts surfaced in which she used obscenities to disparage Netanyahu.
In Pennsylvania, Maryland and Connecticut, Jews don’t make up as much of the population as they do in New York. About 10 percent of New York state’s population is Jewish, while the number hovers around 3-4 percent in the other Eastern states. Also going to the polls on April 26 are Rhode Island and Delaware.
But Jewish voters are known to turn out to vote, and the upcoming states share other demographics that helped Clinton in New York, including major urban areas and large African American and Hispanic populations. Aggregates of polling in the three larger states on the RealClearPolitics website show Clinton substantially leading Sanders.
The victory in what is now Clinton’s home state pushed her number of pledged convention delegates to 1,428, and she also has the support of 502 superdelegates. The total of 1,930 has Clinton nearing the 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination. Sanders has 1,151 pledged delegates and 38 superdelegates. A total of 462 delegates are up for grabs in the Democratic contests next Tuesday.
Trump can look forward to similar favorables in the upcoming Eastern states, which have same-day Republican contests collectively worth 172 delegates. The RealClearPolitics aggregates show Trump leading in all the states, and he has done well in the Northeast and among blue-collar Republican voters.
Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania have winner-take-all or winner-take-most contests, which is good news for the real estate billionaire and his hopes of winning the necessary majority of delegates – 1,237 – to avoid a contested convention.
His victory in New York brings him to 845 delegates, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 559 and 148 for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Still, wariness of Trump among Republican Jews seemed to be evident in the New York City area and denied him a coveted sweep of the state’s 95 delegates. Kasich won Trump’s home turf of Manhattan, and Cruz beat Trump in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods like Crown Heights and Borough Park in Brooklyn.
Cruz, the most stridently pro-Israel candidate among the Republicans, campaigned hard among the Orthodox, including going to a matzah bakery last week.
Trump has alienated many Republican Jews by saying at times that he would remain neutral in brokering Israeli-Palestinian peace, and also with his broadsides against minorities, including Hispanics and Muslims.