Ira Sheskin, professor and chair of the department of geography and regional studies at the University of Miami, came to Binghamton University on Monday to speak to students about the importance of the Jewish vote in the upcoming presidential election.

Sheskin was brought to BU by John Frazier, director of graduate studies for the geography department and Norah Henry, professor of geography. The lecture, which was held in Old University Union, was titled “Why All This Attention To 2% Of The Electorate?: The Jewish Vote In The Presidential Election” and is part of the department’s series.

Sheskin discussed the significance of Jewish voters despite the fact that Jewish people are a small fraction of the country’s total population. Much of Sheskin’s expertise comes from his role as the director of the Jewish Demography Project at the Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies at the University of Miami.

The Jewish vote is important because of the location and concentration of Jewish people in specific places in the United States, according to Sheskin. The top five states with the most Jewish people — New York, California, Florida, New Jersey and Illinois — cast 149 electoral votes for president.

“Yes, Jews moved and are a little more spread out than they were 40 years ago, but they’ve moved to states with lots of electoral votes,” said Sheskin, who studied 48 different local Jewish communities.

According to Sheskin, collective political power can be increased by concentrating the population of a group in particular areas. While Jewish people only make up 3.3 percent of the population in Florida — an important swing state — they constitute a higher percentage of voters because older people tend to vote more. The median age of people in Jewish households in South Palm Beach is 71, meaning that Jewish communities in high population states like Florida can help decide close elections.

In terms of political affiliation, all 11 of the Jewish U.S. Senators are Democrats and, according to Sheskin, this further emphasizes the idea that Jews tend to identify more as Democrats than the general population does. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2013, 70 percent of surveyed Jewish people identified as Democrats, while nationally only 49 percent of the voting population identifies as Democrats.

Sheskin said he believes it is important that Jewish voters understand that they play an influential role in elections.

“I would like to see young American Jews being proud of being Jewish because a strong American Jewish community leads to a stronger America,” Sheskin said.

Orthodox Jewish people are the exception to the general results that Jewish people vote liberal. The same Pew survey indicated that they tend to support Republicans the majority of the time.

The Jewish community at BU makes up a large portion of the student population. BU ranks number 12 in the “Top 60 Public Universities by Jewish Population” by Hillel International, with 26 percent of the undergraduate student population being Jewish. Jewish students in attendance, like Avital Hirsch, a sophomore majoring in linguistics, found the talk to be relevant to Jewish students here at the University in the days leading up to the election.

“I can personally relate to this because I’m Jewish, so it was interesting to see the statistical effect of Jewish voters,” Hirsch said. “I learned a lot, there was a lot of information I didn’t know. It confirmed a lot of what I knew about how Orthodox Jews will vote.”