Presidential candidate Mitt Romney debates President Obama. Photo: Screenshot.

Their candidate lost the U.S. presidential election, but Jewish Republicans—according to their own calculations—still had something to cheer about the next day.

On Nov. 7, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) released the results of a national exit poll of 1,000 Jewish voters, in addition to 600 Jewish voters in Florida and 600 in Ohio, that had President Barack Obama garnering 69 percent of the total Jewish vote, down nine percentage points from 2008. The RJC results mirrored the exit poll numbers for Jewish voters produced by CNN on the night of the election.

Additionally, RJC said in a press release that from 2008 to 2012, “The Republican share of the Jewish vote jumped nationally from 22 percent to 32 percent.” The 10-point increase marked the largest Republican gain among Jews since 1972, according to RJC, whose polling was conducted by Arthur J. Finkelstein & Associates.

“The results demonstrate that President Barack Obama and the Democrats saw a significant erosion of support from 2008, while Republicans continued their trend of the last several decades of making inroads in the Jewish community,” RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said in a statement.