WarSclerotic

JPost.com | BlogCentral | Rosner’s Domain | “Most Jews wont re-elect Obama”, if you care to believe polls.

The McLaughlin poll everybody’s talking about is all here:

And a couple of notes:

1. When one asks whether Jews will “consider voting” for “someone else” this doesn’t mean that they will consider voting for a Republican. They might not. That’s why I do not buy the “Obama lost half of Jewish support” headlines.

2. Previous studies have indicated that “41% of American Jews have visited Israel at some point during their lives.4 Among those who have been to Israel, a little over half (54%) have visited once, 17% have visited twice, and the remaining 29% have visited three times or more”. But the McLaughlin poll has 51% of visitors to Israel. This might mean that the poll is somewhat biased towards Jews more affiliated with Israel than the average – which means one should treat carefully the “total”.

3. By the way, the fact that there a clear “association between affiliation status and close family or friends who live in Israel” is well established. “Fifty-seven percent of affiliated Jews and half of the moderately affiliated have such a connection to Israel, as opposed to only 36% of those who do not have a Jewish organizational affiliation”.

4. Yet again, in the McLaughlin poll 56% have friends or family living in Israel. But according to NJPS the real number is 46% – a 10% difference that can have impact on the total.

5. On the other hand, this new poll has higher percentage of Democrats than the AJC Jewish opinion survey. Confusing? In some ways it is.

5. The number of Jews disapproving of Obama’s handling relations with Israel is much higher in this poll than in the quite recent AJC survey. On the other hand – differences between Orthodox, Conservative and Reform should not surprise anyone.

6. But in both surveys one can see the strong Jewish attachment to Jerusalem. Of all denominations. And also the deep suspicion that Arabs want to destroy Israel and not to make peace with it.

Update: Laura reminded me that Ron wrote an excellent post about this poll. You should read it (here).

This entry was posted on May 10, 2010 at 5:47 PM and is filed under Iran / Israel War. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.