Alison Fox, Pervaiz Shallwani and Aaron Rutkoff for the Wall Street Journal:

Voters interviewed Wednesday pointed to their opposition to same-sex marriage and Turner’s pro-Israel politics as factors that swayed them to pick a Republican.

... Chaim Klein, a 26-year-old bookkeeper in Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood, said the election came down to issues, not party politics.

State Assemblyman David Weprin, the defeated Democratic candidate, voted in favor of gay marriage earlier this year, “so people went out against him,” said Klein, a self-described Democratic voter in the past. “Now because of this people voted Republican.”

Tzirel Zlotnick, a teacher and self-described Orthodox Jew and Republican voter in Kew Gardens, Queens, said she didn’t think much of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, the Democratic lawmaker who resigned from the seat following a scandal over sexually charged online messages. But she would have voted for Weprin, who also identifies as an Orthodox Jew, if not for same-sex marriage.

“How can he call himself an Orthodox Jew and vote for gay marriage?” Zlotnick said. “If not for that, I probably would have voted for him.”

Bella, a principal at a Jewish school for girls in Midwood who declined to give her last name, echoed the decisive nature of Weprin’s same-sex marriage vote. “We felt as a community this is where we wanted to take a stand,” she said.