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I've encountered this claim in a number of sources, both respectable and not, but ultimately seems to stem from an article in Jerusalem Post attributing it to Gil Troy:

The reason for such intense scrutiny is the outsize contributions of Jewish donors to US political campaigns, with Jewish donors contributing a whopping 50% of funds received by the Democratic Party and 25% to the Republican Party, Troy says.

Gil Troy seems to be a indeed a professor of history in McGill University, but I failed to locate any paper that supports the data he provides, and on the face of it it seems a bit suspicious. Given how many donations go through PACs, unions, etc. it would be hard to have exact attribution for whole half of the money, let alone attribute it to a group that is just 2% of the electorate. So, is there any data (and description of methodology) to support this claim, or, alternatively, to refute it?

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    A big potion of the money is donated billions and hundreds of millions at a time. The problem is how do you define corporations? Do you define them by who owns them or the CEO? How do you define the money when the majority shareholder is Jewish but it is far from a 100% Jewish owned business? Also the 2% is misleading. Jews are not subject to the same sort of economic success as the rest of us. Making several times above the average. I keep seeing that they make up about half of American billionaires, but I have not seen a reputable source for that.
    – Jonathon
    Commented Jun 6, 2017 at 16:38
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    I think the easiest way to approach this would be to take the percentage of American wealth owned by Jews, and then times that by 70% (the percent of Jews who are Democrats). But while their are loads of sources for average income, percent of millionaires, percent billionaires, their is nothing I could find to calculate total wealth, this is made even more confusing that some sources are only interested in practicing Jews and others have data on culturally/ethnically Jewish persons. We might also want to take into account that the political split might not be balanced economically.
    – Jonathon
    Commented Jun 6, 2017 at 17:23
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    I'd say if it is privately held corporation whose owners are clearly Jewish (such as if George Soros used some corporation owned by him and clearly only controlled by him to funnel the funds - no idea if that happens, just an example), it would qualify as "Jewish source". However, a public company whose CEO at that moment happens to be Jewish won't - the CEO is not solely in control and is not personally the donor.
    – StasM
    Commented Jun 6, 2017 at 19:28
  • Who the Jewish Billionaires Are Backing for 2016
    – Keith McClary
    Commented Jun 17, 2017 at 2:49

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