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1992.
, Several constituencies may hold the key to Britain's elections.
For the first time in two decades, the Jewish vote could make a difference in a British parliamentary election.
A handful of marginal constituencies with large Jewish populations are so precariously held by either Conservative or Labor members of the 650-seat Parliament that if Jews vote en bloc on April 9, they could settle the issue and decide who governs Britain.
All the polls show the two major parties running neck-and-neck. So they are looking anxiously at marginal constituencies with heavy concentrations of Jewish voters like Hampstead and Ilford South in London and Bury South in Manchester.
In places like these, says London University Prof. Geoffrey Alderman, Jewish votes could mean more than they have since the early 1970s. The last time Britain's 330,000 Jews - out of a total population of 55 million - played a swing role, says Alderman, was in 1974. Then, the Jewish vote went heavily against Conservative MPs who had supported prime minister Edward Heath's arms embargo on Israel in the Yom Kippur War and Labor's Harold Wilson returned to No. 10 Downing Street.
By and large, Jews - who as working-class immigrants heavily favored Labor - now "vote on the economy, except where there is a huge difference in party policy on Israel," according to Matthew Kalman, editor of New Moon, a monthly magazine aimed at young U.K. Jews. While positions on Israel might swing votes if there was a...