Why Crown Heights' Lubavitch Republicans voted anyway

On Tuesday, seventy-two percent of Jewish voters backed Democrats for Congress, one poll found. An NBC News exit poll found sixty-eight.

In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the local Republican committee says more than a thousand more Lubavitch voters backed its candidates than in the last midterm.

On paper, that makes little sense. New York is deep blue. Governor Hochul won a second term.

A Republican vote here rarely changes who wins. So why show up?

Look at where the committee says its strongest blocks were. Empire Boulevard. Montgomery Street. Crown Street. The Kingston–Troy corridor.

By its count, five thousand three hundred forty-six Lubavitch voters backed Republicans this time. In the last midterm, it says, four thousand two hundred sixty-three.

The committee names two local fights. A large homeless shelter in the neighborhood. And the shuttered Kingsbrook shul, a synagogue its owner, a hospital group, planned to demolish, until the governor stepped in last year.

The committee put it in one line: our votes cannot be taken for granted.

In the same poll, a small group of Orthodox voters, about seventy people, went Republican, sixty-three to thirty-four.

And New York's legislature will now seat a record eleven Shomer Shabbos members, including a new Democrat from South Brooklyn.

The Republican candidate for governor lost. The committee says its message still landed.

That is the committee's bet. Whether Albany is listening is the next story.

Narration is an AI voice. Numbers described as a group's own claim are that group's claim, not ours.