The Israel/Gaza issue was double-jeopardy for Democrats in the 2024 election. They lost conservative Jewish voters who believed Trump was more pro-Israel than Harris, and on the other end they lost far-left voters who felt Harris was too pro-Israel. Whether those people voted for Trump or simply didn't vote at all (to "punish" Harris), the result was a win for Trump (and a loss for Gaza).
Since, though, the Jewish population of the US, around 60% of whom live in metropolitan areas of New York, California, Florida, and New Jersey, comprises about 2.4% of the total US population, I wonder to what extent that affected the outcome of the 2024 (or any other) election.
Talk of strategic voting really doesn't get much traction here (in the U.S.) at least in my experience. I think that people have become so disillusioned with what they perceive as a dysfunctional government, regardless of the party in charge, that they no longer have any patience for half-measures.
There's little opportunity for strategic voting in a two-party system, I think. It's only a live issue in the UK because support for what traditionally have been the two main parties, Labour and Conservative, has fallen so dramatically over the last 5 or so years. Labour's 2024 landslide victory was primarily a vote against the Conservatives, who were widely seen to have failed over the previous 10 years, just as the Conservative's 2019 landslide was primarily a vote against the idea of having Jeremy Corbyn as PM and in favour of ending the soul-destroying deadlock over Brexit. Similarly, I think, Labour's unexpectedly strong performance in 2017, when Theresa May called an unexpected and unnecessary general election, was primarily a vote against the Conservatives' catastrophically bungled campaign (they had to withdraw and rewrite a key section of their manifesto, on social care provision after it was dubbed "a dementia tax") rather than a vote for Corbyn.
Now people are pretty much disenchanted with both main parties, to the benefit of insurgent populists on the Right (Reform) and the Left (the Greens). It's noticeable, though, that both the Greens and independent pro-Gaza, socially conservative Muslim candidates do well only in areas where they are the only viable opposition to Labour, so disenchanted voters who would normally support Labour, no matter how reluctantly, can safely vote for an alternative without letting in someone they dislike even more than the Labour candidate.
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