Gallup poll: No erosion in support for Obama among Jewish American voters

The Hill ^ | 7/5/11 | Michael O'Brien

[markomalley]

President Obama enjoys strong, steady support from Jewish Americans amid concerns that he faced an erosion in their backing.

A new Gallup Poll found Monday that 60 percent of Jewish Americans said they approve of the way Obama is handling his job, a figure that's relatively consistent with the high level of support he's enjoyed from that bloc this year.

Thirty-two percent of Jewish Americans said they disapprove of the way the president is handling his job, a figure that hasn't really jumped since May 19, when Obama delivered a major speech outlining a peace process for Israelis and Palestinians.

That speech was sharply rebuked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and spurred speculation — especially on the right — that Jewish voters who had been aligned with Democrats might shift their support away from Obama.

That storyline has prompted some coverage, and Democrats have been sensitive to the charge; the Democratic National Committee recently went out of its way to boast that a fundraiser featuring Jewish Democrats in Washington was oversold.

The Gallup Poll, conducted throughout June, has a 7 percent margin of error.

[daisy mae for the usa]

Do you happen to know if Stephen Speilberg is one of those who support Obama?

[NVDave]

No, it merely has a wider margin of error.

In order to achieve tighter margins of error, you would need a larger sample size. A sample size of 1,023 yields the common +/- 3%, for example.

As long as you keep in mind the large margin of error, the results are statistically valid. Given that Jews are such a small cohort of the population, and that they vote in the vast majority for the Democratic (or more frequently, lunatic liberal) candidate in a race, the only interesting result would be if there were such a huge change in opinion in the Jewish voting cohort so as to indicate a change (eg) from 80% of Jews voting for Obama to only 30% voting for Obama. Multiply that by 3% to arrive at the overall voting demographics and you see how many Jews it would take changing their minds to result in even a 1% change in the overall vote tally.

[piperpilot]

resistant to Godly direction.

[familyop]

And what slightly larger proportion of the population (~ 25%) votes like Pelosi, has too many of its own Democrats in government and Hollywood (much higher percentages than their part in the general population) and has been pushing this country further to the left for over a 100 years? Hint: it’s not “the Joos.”

Slippery, pieces like that of O’Brien’s piece are beside the point. Jewish folks only comprise about 3% or less of the population, and they reside mainly in big cities.

It’s even further beside the point than that. Both political parties are socialist and in support of big, fat, effeminate government. We’re heading for default with either party in government. Both parties are also more involved in playing Lawrence of Arabia than being honest allies with the best (Israel, for one).

[sam_paine]

It seems reasonable that US Jews, who by definition do-not-live-in-Israel.....might not be big Zionists.

Why does this "seem reasonable"?

What reference are you asking about? That not all Jews are Zionists? Or that Jews who do not live in Israel obviously might not be Zionists?

What is unreasonable about those statements?

Is it reasonable for a Jew to not be a Zionist? That's a totally different question and not one I was posing.

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

[Antoninus]

For such smart people, they sure are stupid.

[dervish]

I disagree with the misleading title and premise of this poll. The speech in May on the 1967 borders was not the turning point. Jewish support had already eroded by then due to Obama's constant betrayal of Israel and spurning of PM Netanyahu.

From Gallup's own poll:

That constitutes almost a 28% drop in support from Jewish voters. That is an extremely large drop and rivals the historical support Jewish voters gave Pres Reagan.

IMO there are three groups of Jewish voters. The minority (20-25%) of conservative voters; the 30-35% hardcore leftists who dislike Israel and the US; and the Jews who care about Israel but are social leftists and habitual Dem voters.

Only this third group has a changeable vote, but the incentive has to be large enough. In this case, more so than even the second Carter election, the incentive is there.

This could be a historic Jewish Republican vote. Even more important IMO, Jewish financial support for Obama could disappear.

For those here that are constantly berating the Jewish vote, imagine if the Christian vote shifted Republican by 28%.

[gogogodzilla]

Is what you see any different than the rest of Maryland? It is a state more liberal than New York, ya know...

[justiceseeker93]

When you read the small print on this, you'll find that the results for the Jewish respondents have a + or - error of 7 percentage points, and that it is not limited to likely voters, or even registered voters (this goes for non-Jewish respondents as well). Gallup polls, unless immediately preceding an election, have a well-earned reputation of being skewed to the 'Rats, no matter what sub-groups they are talking about. So I would say that the real result in that O's approval rating with the voting Jewish population is somewhere in the 50s, which corresponds to my prediction for him in the 2012 election.

And yes, the headline accompanying this story is very misleading, obviously written by a Democrat shill.

[andy58-in-nh]

A few observations:

Gallup never releases their methodology, so it is always difficult to know what the internal poll statistics might imply. The overall sample shows high support for Obama relative to other polls (46%), so there's one clue.

The entire sample of Jewish respondents was 512 people, which to me implies a considerably larger margin of error than 7%, especially given the likely geographic concentration of those who answered the poll.

Also, because so many of those polled are likely to be life-long Democrats, any consideration of voting for a Republican would be far more likely to require the naming of an actual person, as opposed to a "hypothetical" character.

[Mr. Mojo]

Thirty-two percent of Jewish Americans said they disapprove of the way the president is handling his job

Wouldn't surprise me if an indecent percentage of those who disapprove do so only because they think Obama hasn't governed far enough to the left. Bill Maher comes to mind. You know, the folks who are ticked off that Gitmo is still open for biz, all our guns haven't yet been confiscated, and the Tea Party hasn't been designated a terrorist organization. Millions of these loons exist. ....and although many of them are leftist Jews, the vast majority of them are NON-Jews.

[Eleutheria5]

Plausible enough. I won’t sit Shiva for American Jews, then.

[COBOL2Java]

I think one needs to draw a distinction between ethnic Jews and religious Jews - i.e., Jews that actually practice their faith. Someone earlier in the thread referred to the former as JINOs, Jews In Name Only.

For example, I'd call Jon Stewart a typical JINO:

...whereas I'd call Joe Lieberman a religious Jew (his liberal proclivities notwithstanding):

Now, I could be wrong, but I would guess that Joe Lieberman is supportive of Israel. I suspect Jon Stewart's reaction to Israel's problems with the Middle East is "Eh..."

[juliej]

I DO NOT believe this poll: I just read another one that found that Jewish support for Obama had dropped tremendously and that many Jews would not vote for him in 2012. Only time will tell. I have ZERO sympathy for such self-loathing people who pretend to belong to my religion.

[justiceseeker93]

Gallup never releases their methodology...

Sorry, Andy, if you read the end of the story, Gallup generally does release a summary of their methodology, which they did in this case. The reason why Gallup shows higher support for Obama than other polls is because they don't limit their respondents to registered voters, let alone likely voters. Instead, they interview anyone who answers the phone who claims to be 18 years or older. Heck, they even include aliens in most of their surveys.

The entire survey of Jewish respondents was 512 people, which to me implies a considerably larger margin of error than 7%.

I can tell you that there is a formula used in statistics where one can determine the margin of error to a specified probability (say 95%), based entirely on two variables which are plugged into that formula: the number of items sampled (in this case, 512 Jewish respondents) and the number of items in the total "universe" (in this case, the total number of Jewish Americans 18 and over, which is roughly 4 million). 7% happens to be a high margin of error for any national political poll, BTW. To lower the margin of error, they had to reach more Jewish Americans, but they probably decided not to because of the expense involved.

...the likely geographic concentration of those who answered the poll.

The Jews surveyed by their method would probably not have a geographic concentration much different than the general geographic distribution of Jews in the US. I don't see that as a particular problem of this methodology. But it's possible that the Orthodox and and more recently arrived Russian Jews - who tend to vote Republican in presidential elections and strongly anti-Obama - may have been undersampled because of cultural and language differences.

[rmlew]

The Jews surveyed by their method would probably not have a geographic concentration much different than the general geographic distribution of Jews in the US. I don't see that as a particular problem of this methodology. But it's possible that the Orthodox and and more recently arrived Russian Jews - who tend to vote Republican in presidential elections and strongly anti-Obama - may have been undersampled because of cultural and language differences.

Also, where they calling on Friday and Saturday?

[justiceseeker93]

Also, were they calling on Friday and Saturday?

I'd include that, broadly speaking, in "cultural differences," and some of that probably did occur.

BTW, did you notice that the authoress of the Gallup poll report has an Arab surname? She seems to be one of the honchos at Gallup.

[justiceseeker93]

Jewish folks only comprise about 3% or less of the population and they reside mainly in big cities.

Actually those demographics have changed significantly in the last four or five decades. Jews now make up less than 2% of the American population, and many have left big cities for suburbs and exurbs.