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| Home Front: Politix |
| The Exit Polls and the Jewish Vote |
| 2006-11-16 |
| Gorgeous article digging into how statistics were used to lie about the Jewish vote in this election. Do not read if too many numbers make your eyes cross. The key bits: Almost within hours of the release on Wednesday morning of summaries of the national exit polls, conducted with voters across the county on Election Day, I received several gloating emails from liberal Jewish acquaintances, pointing to one specific result within the exit poll data: namely how Jewish voters within the national sample, had voted in the races for the U.S. House of Representatives. That sub-sample of just over 200 people who self-identified as Jewish voters (about 2% of the total survey sample), reported that they had voted 87% for Democrats 12% for Republicans. The same day the national voter survey data was made available, the RJC released a survey of a much larger sample of Jews conducted by Arthur J. Finkelstein & Associates in three states and Congressional districts with close races this past week. The RJC survey suggested that the 2006 Jewish voting pattern closely resembled that in 2004: 26% support for Republicans in the House races, and 27% in the Senate contest (there were also Senate races in Pennsylvania and Florida this year). The Finkelstein survey of 1,000 Jewish voters interviewed both older and younger voters, and members of the different Jewish branches in America – reform (least traditional), conservative, and orthodox (most traditional, lots more kids). Age and the branch of Judaism, both seemed to matter a lot in the 2004 survey results, and they did again this year: the more often a Jew attended synagogue, the more likely he or she was to vote Republican. Similarly, younger Jews, and in particular younger Jewish males, were much more likely to vote Republican. Orthodox Jews were more than twice as likely to vote Republican as Reform Jews. None of this is surprising. The degree of religious affiliation has been positively correlated with the likelihood of voting Republican for other religious groups in the country as well. Over time, changes in the composition of the Jewish community will impact how Jews vote. The trends are likely to favor Republicans. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #3 The more you go to synagogue, the more you worry about Israel and her enemies. Since Israel's enemies are automatically ours, the more you go to synagogue the more you care about fighting them. And, which party cares more about that? My favorite bad statistic of the season stated that in Senatorial races the Democrats got x million more votes than the Republicans. I forget what x was. Of course, those races included California… |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2006-11-16 20:20 |
| #2 It's been said before - not all Democrats are anti-religion bigots, but pretty much all anti-religion bigots vote Democrat. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2006-11-16 06:17 |
| #1 Yessss...Figures don't lie, but liars figure. Go figure. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2006-11-16 05:54 |