Says one expert of Donald Trump: "He’s still pulling half, I think that’s good, but it’s never been so close in Israel that I’ve followed.” | Getty Trump wins his first state: Israel

Donald Trump may be trailing in key battlegrounds like Pennsylvania and Virginia, but there’s another state that offers better news: the state of Israel.

According to a survey of 1,140 U.S. citizens living in Israel, most of whom have mailed in absentee ballots, Trump is ahead of Hillary Clinton by 49 percent to 44 percent.


But just like in the U.S., Trump has a problem with the base in Israel, said Mitchell Barak, a consultant in Israel who served as a pollster on the survey, which was conducted in conjunction with the nonpartisan group iVote Israel.

Typically among this cohort — American Jews living in Israel, many of whom tend to be more religious — the Republican nominee captures around 75 percent of the vote, he said, noting that was the case for John McCain and Mitt Romney. Often those Americans who choose to move to Israel value a muscular U.S. foreign policy and an aggressive approach to combating terrorism, issues that recent Republican nominees have made a particular point to prioritize.

This time around, however, Israeli residents with U.S. citizenship are much more closely divided. That mirrors the reluctance of many in the conservative corners of the Washington foreign policy establishment to trust Trump to defend U.S. allies, and with national security issues more broadly.

“There’s much less support for the Republican candidate at this point,” Barak said. “He’s not getting as many [voters]. He’s still pulling half, I think that’s good, but it’s never been so close in Israel that I’ve followed.”

Other polls find that Trump is doing much worse with Israelis overall: A survey from last month found Israelis prefer Clinton over Trump, 42 percent to 24 percent.

The iVote Israel survey captures only a slice of the population of U.S. citizens living in Israel, a number the organization estimates could be as high as 200,000, though a smaller proportion is actually expected to vote.

In the poll of U.S. voters released Thursday, those voting absentee sent their ballots back to their home states, with the vast majority going to New York, followed by New Jersey and then California.

The sample size for voters sending ballots to actual swing states was much smaller — just 66 voters, for example, were registered in Pennsylvania. But of the battleground states, Clinton won among Pennsylvania voters, Trump won with Florida voters and the Ohio voters included in the survey — there were 43 of them — deadlocked at 44 percent. This comes as pro-Trump forces have made a high-profile play to get voters with ties to swing states to vote absentee.

Also reflecting stateside trends, Clinton won female voters, 52-42 percent, and Trump won male voters, 59-33 percent. Trump cleaned up with those who consider themselves ultra-Orthodox Jews, landing 85 percent of that vote, while Clinton was strongest with secular Jews, earning 75 percent of their vote.

Distance from the candidates — and the day-to-day grind of the election — does not make Israeli hearts grow fonder: As in America, both Trump and Clinton have sky-high unfavorable ratings, with his clocking in at 65 percent and hers at 64 percent.

“There was less interest in this election than previous elections,” Barak said. “This was not a normal election for people.”

The survey was conducted from Oct. 31-Nov. 2 and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points. It was conducted online, through email invites to registered American voters living in Israel. Of those surveyed, 197 did not vote in the presidential election, for reasons ranging from not receiving a ballot in time (50 percent) to not liking either presidential candidate (21 percent).