Jews are a contradictory people. Overall, achievement-oriented and very capitalistic, Jewish educational and self-employment statistics are among the highest for any religious group. They are also politically powerful; amounting to roughly 2 percent of the U.S. population – half their percentage a half century ago – Jews account for nine of 100 U.S. senators and 19 of 435 members of the House.

Yet if Jews have achieved significant economic and political power, they have done so primarily as Democrats. Only one of the 28 Jews in Congress is a Republican – Lee Zeldin from New York’s Long Island – and the one independent, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, is enough of a Democrat to be running, with surprising success, for that party’s presidential nomination.

This conundrum befuddles some conservatives. Ann Coulter, the Right’s blonde shock jock, recently thundered about why Republicans were so anxious to support Israel, asking, “How many f–ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?” And there is still Pat Buchanan, who reflects classic anti-Semitic notions of Jews as a cabal with divided loyalties.

The European Experience

Those Jews who survived the European experience have had good reason to distrust the Right. After all, ultraconservatives supported Czarist pogroms in Russia, defended the perpetrators of fraud in the Dreyfus case in France (where a Jewish officer was falsely accused of treason) and, most importantly, provided many of the ideological roots of the Holocaust.

But, in recent years, anti-Semitism and, particularly, anti-Zionism have shifted ever more to the Left. Over a decade ago, my wife and I visited Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, the famed French Nazi hunters, at their Paris office. Although they expressed concern about the traditional anti-Semitism of Jean Marie Le Pen’s National Front party, they were more alarmed about a rising new virulent strain from a combination of Islamic and left-leaning sources.

The massive movement of Muslims into Europe – now accelerating into a tsunamic wave – is accelerating these trends. The European Left, long enamored of radicals from the developing world, increasingly adopts the notion that Israel represents the ultimate political atrocity.

The most obvious manifestation now is the powerful drive to force European universities to divest themselves of investments in Israeli companies and even ban Israeli academics. This is occurring even though Israel, with all its many imperfections, is by far the most democratic, feminist and gay-tolerant country in that exceedingly bad neighborhood.

It’s hard not to see anti-Semitic ideas in this assault. You can certainly oppose, as I do, some Israeli policies – notably settlement expansion in the West Bank – as both wrong and tactically disastrous, without censuring an entire country. Anti-Israel protesters seem less than troubled to associate with Hamas and other terrorist group who have even chanted “Jews, Jews to the gas” at demonstrations joined by the Left.

Fear is also on the streets; there are so many incidents of violence against Jews in France that Jewish children are advised not to wear yarmulkes or any other outward signs of their faith.

These trends are reshaping European politics. Long tied to the Left, Jews in France, for example, by a good margin now support the Gaullist right. Even Marine Le Pen, who has submerged her father’s anti-Semitic views, appeals to Jewish votes by opposing Muslim immigration. At the same time, as Muslim voters already vastly outnumber Jews, the French Left has to respond to its growing constituency, the vast majority of whom supported Socialist Francois Hollande in the most-recent election.

A similar process has occurred in Britain, where, even with the nominally Jewish Ed Milliband at the top of the ticket, Labor lost heavily to the Conservatives among Jews. Milliband’s successor as Labor leader, far-left icon Jeremy Corbyn, describes the Islamists of Hamas and Hezbollah as “good friends.” Polls show two-thirds of British Jews alarmed by Corbyn’s rise.

Can it happen here?

So far, Jews in America are blessed with two major political parties that, for the most part, are tolerant and express support of Israel. And, for as long as this is the case, Jews, particularly those of European descent, likely will continue to support left-leaning politics more than those of the Right. But lock-step support for the Left seems destined to weaken.

In 2008, 78 percent of Jewish voters supported Barack Obama against John McCain, who had a strong pro-Israel record in the Senate. Four years later, Obama won again, but with a somewhat diminished 69 percent of the Jewish vote.

Things got even worse for Democrats in the 2014 congressional election, when one-third of Jews voted Republican, a 21-point shift over six years. In the most recent Gallup poll, Jewish support for the president fell to 50 percent, a huge turnaround from over 80 percent in 2009.

The Iran nuclear deal pushed by Obama – and opposed by about half of Jews – will likely solidify a growing Jewish Right. Obama’s detestation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has certainly alarmed the Zionist establishment, and some of the wealthiest donors, such as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, have turned into staunch GOP megafunders.

But then there’s what some regard as Obama’s demonstrably pro-Muslim tilt. This can be seen in everything from his bizarre refusal to name “extreme Islam” as the country’s most pressing security risk, to his labeling as “a random act” the killing of patrons in a Paris kosher market by an Islamist gunman.

The shift toward the Right could also be accelerated by events on America’s college campuses. Anti-Semitism on American college campuses, including those of the University of California, has become ever more evident. At the same time, a majority of the most fervently anti-Israel members of Congress come from the Democratic Left. Like their European counterparts, some Democratic politicians soon may find that appealing to Muslims pays larger dividends than catering to Jews; by 2030 there will be more Muslims than Jews in America, according to Pew.

Growing divide

What we are likely to see in the future is not so much a conservative Jewish electorate, as some in the GOP hope, but one increasingly divided. Many nominally Jewish politicians will remain in lock-step with the Democratic Party as it drifts away from the center and from Israel. Secular Jews, those with perhaps only a marginal affiliation with the tribe’s institutions, will likely continue to hew to the left, even if it means leaving what remains of their Jewish allegiances at the door.

There’s certainly some good news for conservatives. Right-leaning Orthodox Jews, roughly 10 percent of the total, are demographically ascendant since they typically have almost three times as many children as the most Democratic-leaning subgroup, which Pew calls “Jews of no religion.” The Orthodox, according to some demographers, already account for 60 percent of Jewish children in New York. Some recent Jewish newcomers, such as Persians and Russians, coming from a different experience than early 20th century European immigrants, also tend to lean more to the right.

Another key demographic to watch will be intermarried Jews, who account for three in five who have tied the knot since 2005. Although they are much more likely than in the past to raise their children Jewish, their partners could do much to determine their ultimate political direction.

It also matters very much what the Republicans and conservatives actually do. Most Jews are not likely to embrace the kind of racist rhetoric that thrills some Donald Trump supporters, and many Jews likely would find repugnant Dr. Ben Carson’s suggestion that a Muslim should never be president, which reveals a kind of logic historically directed at Jews. Whatever their feelings on Israel, most Jews remain social liberals, particularly on issues of equity, women’s and gay rights.

In the end, there remains an opportunity for a conservative who can adopt the open, nonthreatening approach epitomized by Ronald Reagan, who received upward of 50 percent of Jewish votes in 1980. We know that tough GOP pragmatists, like former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan or New York’s Rudy Giuliani, won the Jewish vote in their cities against strong liberal opposition.

Jews may never become a core constituency of the political Right, but the days when they automatically supported the latest fetishes of the Left may also be coming to an end.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University in Orange and the executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism.