A couple of blocks from the Brighton Beach boardwalk, two aging Russian women with painted eyebrows and shopping carts ran into a friend yesterday as she returned from voting.

A lengthy discussion and demonstration of lever-pulling ensued, but there was no question about whom to vote for: “Bush,” the three women said in unison.

The poll monitor at the Shorefront YM-YWHA, Ester Balyasay, said the women’s choice was typical of the Russian Jewish voters at the polling site.

“They like Bush because Bush is a strong man,” said Ms. Balyasay, an immigrant from the Ukraine, in between fielding such questions about how many switches to push and what to do after a vote is cast. “They’re happy that Bush lets Israel do what they want. Bush says everybody have to protect themselves.”

In a state where Senator Kerry was swept to victory, Assembly District 46 in Southern Brooklyn was awash yesterday with Russian-speaking supporters of President Bush.

While the heavily Russian district’s 11,901 enrolled Republicans account for less than one-quarter of the district’s registered voters, according to statistics from the state Board of Election, they outnumbered the enrolled Republicans in any other district in the borough.

And the actual number of votes cast for Mr. Bush in the district would probably be much higher, the president of the Russian-American Voters Education League, Vladimir Epstein, predicted yesterday. He said that of the roughly 300,000 Russian-speaking Jews in New York, about one-half live in Southern Brooklyn.

“Russian-American Voters Education League was receiving endless questions asking whether if they were registered Democrats should they be switched to Republican,” Mr. Epstein said. “Their thoughts about the future of Israel made them to vote for Bush. Really, in his campaign, Kerry wasn’t so clear about his plans in the Middle East.”

Yury Baraz, 84, an immigrant from Ukraine, registered as a Democrat after he became a citizen a decade ago. But he did not vote for Mr. Kerry yesterday.

“Bush is an authentic individual, a mensch. He understands the role of military power. He is a strong man, ” Mr. Baraz said in Yiddish through a translator, proudly describing how he marched from Moscow to Berlin as a soldier during World War II.

“If you listen to Kerry not one time, not four times, not 10 times,” Mr. Baraz said, “over and over he says I will do this or that. My mother always told me judge a man by what he does, not by what he says. Bush does.”

Mr. Baraz said he supported the strong stance the president had taken in Iraq and against terrorism, adding, “Everybody in the neighborhood feels this way.”

Not Fira Kaplansky, a middle-aged immigrant from Belarus who wore a pale pink ensemble and silver sneakers with Velcro straps. “Kerry represents the middle class, the poor people. That’s why I voted for him,” Ms. Kaplansky said after casting her vote at the Shorefront Y. Next to her, her husband, Vladimir Multan, who emigrated from Moldova 13 years ago, stood shaking his head. “I feel more safe with Bush,” Mr. Multan said, asserting that all of his friends felt the same way. “He’s good to attack the terrorists.”

Ms. Kaplansky sighed, shook her fingers at her husband and said, “It’s the whole night like this.”