Bernie Sanders is closer to the Oval Office than any Jew since Barry Goldwater.

A strong performer ahead of next year’s Democratic Party primaries, some polls have the Vermont senator tied for second place with Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, although a long way behind Joe Biden. Others suggest a three-way draw.

But, curiously, it appears Mr Sanders is less popular among Jewish Democrats than Democrat voters as a whole.

Although the data vary, he polls between 15 and 20 per cent among Democrats nationally — yet only 11 per cent of Jewish members, according to a survey collected by Morning Consult earlier this summer.

One more from the Morning Consult Dem WH poll -- support by religious identity: pic.twitter.com/6e8M3mrOwA

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) May 7, 2019

Those same Jews love Mr Biden. The former vice-president enjoys the support of nearly half the Jewish Democrat vote — comfortably higher than the 25-to-40 per cent he wins among party voters as a whole.

And, according to an analysis of political donations by the Forward, Mr Sanders has received far less money from American Jews than Pete Buttigieg, mayor of a small Indiana city.

Jewish Democrats broadly represent the American Jewish community, which has overwhelmingly voted for leftist candidates for over a century. The most historically popular Republican presidents — Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan — never managed to crack 50 per cent of the Jewish vote.

According to the American-Israeli Co-operative Enterprise, even in the Republican landslide elections of 1972, 1984 and 1988, between 57 and 65 per cent of US Jews voted Democrat. 

Five Democratic presidential candidates — Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and Bill Clinton — took up to 80 per cent. Harry Truman, Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama also enjoyed great popularity with Jews.

So why only lukewarm support for Mr Sanders? Outwardly, he is certainly very Jewish indeed, with his thick Brooklyn accent, penchant for expressive “hand-talking” and kvetchy manner. He’s practically the walking archetype of a Jew of a certain age.

He also bears a striking resemblance to Larry David — a distant relative — and even played a rabbi named Manny Shewitz in the 1999 movie My X-Girlfriend’s Wedding Reception.

Mr Sanders has always asserted his views are rooted in his Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn in the 1940s and 1950s where, as his brother Larry once told me, “if you were a right-wing Jew it meant you were a left-wing Democrat”.

In 1920, a third-party socialist candidate, Eugene Debs, managed to win 38 per cent of the Jewish vote, but only 3.4 per cent of the national vote — an inconceivable notion today.

In the decades since then, US Jews, like their British cousins, have moved slowly to the right. Although they are still mostly Democratic voters, the 78-year-old Mr Sanders has, to a degree, been left behind.

Politics has clearly alienated him from the Jewish community. A self-proclaimed socialist, he is firmly on the left of his party. His perceived stance on Israel may not help him with Jews, but he is far less anti-Zionist than he is often portrayed.

Attempts on this side of the Atlantic to group him with Jeremy Corbyn and his associates on Israel-Palestine are risible.

He is a long-standing and vocal advocate for Palestinian rights and a state of their own, but has also expressed his support for Israel’s right to exist in security.

In Washington last month, he told a Jewish supporter that criticism of Israel’s government should not be conflated with antisemitism, adding that blame for the Israel-Palestinian conflict “is not all with Israel,” branding the Palestinian leadership corrupt.

Most controversial was his suggestion that the US could “leverage” its aid money to Israel “in order to end the racism we have recently seen in Israel”. That angered some proudly pro-Zionist American Jews, but found support in pockets of the community, too.

In the 60 years since the US elected its first non-WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) Commander-in-Chief in JFK, Jewish men have become Secretary of State, chair of the Federal Reserve and White House chief of staff.

But Mr Sanders’s election to the world’s most powerful office would be something else entirely. Representing the final step towards acceptance and assimilation, it would ensure Jews’ contribution to the United States could never be erased from the history books.

Regardless of political stripe, Jews everywhere should be able to raise a glass to a President Bernie Sanders.