Mitt Romney, John Thune make pitch to Jewish Republicans at RJC bash

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency ^ | April 5, 2011 | Ron Kampeas

[ChicagoHebrew]

As I have stated before, that 78% figure is in all likelihood an overestimate. It's difficult to measure "the Jewish vote" because of numerous inherent problems in accurately sampling Jewish voters. Then, too, people who do these studies are almost invariably Democrats and build in their own personal biases. The intuitive guess here is that the number for Obama was no higher than 70% in 2008 and he will be very fortunate to get to 60% of "the Jewish vote" if he runs again next year.

I tend to agree. These surveys are all based on exit polling data, not actual votes. Two kinds of Jews are heavily Republican: Orthodox Jews, and recent (1970s-1990s) Russian immigrants. Together, they are about 25% of the Jewish population. But they are heavily, heavily concentrated into a few tightly packed neighborhoods and polling places. If the exit pollers don't visit those neighborhoods, these Jews don't get counted in the data.

[ChicagoHebrew]

Just look at the voting totals in west Los Angeles, parts of New York and Miami.

It depends which parts of New York. My hunch is that Obama didn't get too many Jewish votes in Orthodox & Russian immigrant strongholds -- Flatbush, Crown Heights, Kew Gardens, Forrest Hills, Riverdale, Brighton Beach, etc. The Orthodox have been predominantly Republican for a long time. And the Russian immigrants hate anything that reminds them of communism.

[justiceseeker93]

Two kinds of Jews are heavily Republican: Orthodox Jews, and recent (1970s-1990s) Russian immigrants.

Agreed, at least in recent presidential elections, and I would add Jews from other formerly communist Eastern European nations to the recent Russians. Also, as a third subgroup, Jews of Israeli background in the US and American Jews in Israel tend to vote GOP. You are correct in your assumption that exit pollsters would tend not to bother with any of these subgroups because of cultural differences and (in the case of American Jews in Israel) distances. That can skew the final tally toward the 'Rats.

[Jewbacca]

I don’t know any conservative Jewish people who voted for Obama.

Despite the Most Diaspora Jewish people care little about Israel, so they are not “self-loathing” -— they just don’t care about Israel. (Hence, why they remain in the Diaspora.)

Anyway, your obsession with 1.7% of the electorate is unhealthy and nonsensical. If every single Jewish American voted for McCain/Palin, Obama would still be president -— he was elected by goy, despite your desire to pin him on the JOoooooos.

[Jewbacca]

“Two kinds of Jews are heavily Republican: Orthodox Jews, and recent (1970s-1990s) Russian immigrants.”

Three: Israeli Americans.

(But I also fall under Orthodox, albeit a BT.)

[truthguy]

We may have had a lot of loud $ Jews who gave to the SOB, but don’t blame Jewish votes for putting that bastard in.

I'm not blaming Jewish voters for putting in Obama. He probably would have won even without the Jewish vote. Who knows? But 100% of my Jewish Friends voted for him (or so they say). The 78% number came from Dennis Prager- a Jewish, and very conservative talk show host. I'm a regular listener of his show. Incidentally, Prager has written extensively on why Jewish people vote for Democrats and liberals. It's complex. So it isn't just Obama. Jews have been voting for liberals and Democrats for at least as long as FDR. It makes no sense to me and it frustrates one of my Jewish friends who complains about it. Ironically he voted for Obama because he said he hated McCain and wanted to give a black man a chance to see what they could do. He thought it would be good for the country. Now it's blown up in his face. Will he change? I hope so.

[SJackson]

As Yehuda correctly notes, if every Jew in the nation voted for McCain twice, noting changed. If every Jew in America, men, women, children, even the unborn, voted for McCain twice, and every Jew in Israel and Europe voted for him once, forget citizenship, President Obama would be President Obama.

I find the "FR conservative" (as opposed to mainstream, real world conservatives and Republicans) focus on religious voting a bit bizarre, but if that's the focus, Barak Hussain Obama is the President of this Christian nation, secular government, voted in by American Christians.

This is where "FR conservatives" come in and explain to me why the Christians who voted him in aren't really Christians, Christianity apparently being a faith defined by 21st and 20th century political affiliation.

A rather silly arguement, and one that doesn't attract minorities to the GOP. And no, it's not a GOP arguement, but one the left loves to pin on us.

[SJackson]

I don’t know any conservative Jewish people who voted for Obama.

Funny, amongst friends, almost none. Their wives, a very different story. Not worth polling, there aren't enough of us, but I suspect there's a gender factor at work. Along with a too small sample for polling. And too much of a focus on faith.

I split my time between Illinois and Wisconsin. If you check the exit polls, Illinois, like states like California, have no religion breakdown for Jews, the data is too small to be significant. Wisconsin, you can hardly count the Jews living there much less poll voters, there aren't any, but with a Jewish population in the vicinity of 1/2 of 1% it's not uncommon for the pseudo liberal, ethnically German, Polish and Scandanavian state to send 2 Jewish Senators to Washington. Minnesota does the same thing. It's not about religion.

Of course when you consider that no state has a 10% Jewish population, and only two, NJ and NY are over 5%, it's obvious to political operative that religion probably isn't the reason there are 14 Jewish Senators.

[SJackson]

I tend to agree. These surveys are all based on exit polling data, not actual votes.

Not even that. If you check the data (CNN has a good database you can search by state, all the news organizations share the same poll) you'll find that states like Illinois and California are statistically insignificant, forget about places in real flyover country. The statistically "significant" states are in the northeast and Florida. Guess what, NY and CT and NY and FL voted for Obama, big time. It's not a religion thing.