Palin and Jews (Updated)
Jennifer Rubin recently wrote a piece about why Governor Palin purportedly doesn't poll well with American Jews. We've discussed Frum's response to her piece. While Rubin means well, the very premise of her article is flawed as the polling actually suggests that Governor Palin is probably as popular with American Jews as is possible for someone considered a very conservative Republican.
This liberal makes a statistical argument with which I agree:
The entirety of the Commentary article rests on the notion that Jews actually disproportionately dislike Palin. As her one piece of evidence, Rubin cites a 9/08 poll showing that only 37 percent of Jews approve of Palin. Is this really disproportionately low?
Well, we know from exit polls that Jews tend to vote roughly 75-25 in favor of Democratic presidential candidates. And in the fall of 2008, about 83% of Republicans and 21% of Democrats approved of Palin. So let's do a little back-of-the-envelope calculation:
.75*21 + .25*83 = 15.75 + 20.75 = 36.5.
So going by their partisan voting patterns alone, we would expect 36.5 percent of Jews to approve of Palin -- almost exactly what that poll found.
This liberal then fails to tell the few readers that he has that a 36% favorable rating among American Jews for someone perceived to be a very conservative Republican is pretty good considering that the presidential nominee from the Democrat Party typically wins around 75% of the Jewish vote while the presidential nominee from the Republican Party wins around 25% of the Jewish vote. By comparison, the Republican presidential nominee usually wins around 75% of the white born-again evangelical Christian vote while the presidential nominee from the Democrat Party wins around 25% of the white born-again evangelical Christian vote. In other words, the Democrat Party nominee wins around the same percentage of the Jewish vote as the percentage of the white born-again evangelical Christian vote that is won by the Republican nominee.
According to the following Quinnipiac poll, Barack Obama's favorable rating among white born-again evangelical Christians is 28% and his approval rating is 23% among this group. When comparing Obama's favorable and approval rating among white born-again evangelical Christians to what is Palin's presumed favorable rating among Jews according to the math, the most reasonable conclusion is that she's actually doing as well, if not better, with a group that is a core group of the Democrat Party than Obama is doing with a core group of the Republican Party.
Of course, one group is much more significant for the purposes of elections as white born-again evangelical Christians comprised 26% of the electorate this past election, up from 23% in 2004. Jewish voters comprised 2% of the electorate this past election.
To conclude, it appears that Rubin asked the wrong question. The better question is how is a conservative Republican such as Sarah Palin polling as well as she is among a group that overwhelmingly votes Democrat, especially considering that the man she may want to replace in 2012 does not do as well with white evangelical born-again Christians, a group that votes overwhelmingly for Republicans in nearly the same percentage that Jews vote for the Democrat Party nominee (with the caveat in mind that one group does not have anywhere near the same influence on elections as the other just on the basis of sheer numbers.)
Update: Far-left liberal Jonathan Chait from the New Republican argues that the data cited by Rubin shows that "Palin's selection was more popular among Jews than the McCain-Palin ticket.." I agree completely but Chait then fails to recognize that Palin's standing with Jews is quite respectable for someone perceived to be a very conservative Republican for the reasons I've outlined. Her standing with Jews is not worse than Barack Obama's standing with white evangelical born-again Christians. As noted above, the latter is a much more significant group for the purposes of electoral politics as the raw numbers clearly prove.
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8 comments:
Ok i think that with the jews it pretty clear they need to vote for sarah. Obama will sell my jewish brothers and sisters down the river and let isreal burn to the ground.
I have a good friend who is Jewish, a local Baltimore person (Baltimore has a large Jewish community)
He went to school at Georgia Tech, and he later told a story about getting a haircut there.
All the good ol' boys were in the shop, and they were talking about what church they went to, so they were curious about where my friend went.
"The Methodist church", he said.
I think they vote Dem just to fit in.
This is anecdotal but that's my take.
Plus his Dad, who's in a carpet business, wears an earring. Why ? "To fit in, he said".
- maybe not directly relevant, but human-wise, it is.
<span>I have a good friend who is Jewish, a local Baltimore person (Baltimore has a large Jewish community)
He went to school at Georgia Tech, and he later told a story about getting a haircut there.
All the good ol' boys were in the shop, and they were talking about what church they went to, so they were curious about where my friend went.
"The Methodist church", he said.
I think they vote Dem just to fit in.
This is anecdotal but that's my take.
Plus his Dad, who's in the carpet-install business, wears an earring. Why ? "To fit in", he said.
- maybe not directly relevant, but human-wise, it is.</span>
75% Democrat voting pattern sounds like they're trying real hard to fit into the black community.
It always puzzles me why Jews vote Democrat in the USA and for the Labor Party in Australia.
You would think that conservatives would be more friendly towards Israel. Or don't modern liberal Jews really care about Israel?
Only orthodox Jews are conservatives. They vote Republican.
Reformed Jews are liberal in majority.They lost touch with Israel ( physical and spiritual ) long ago.
I'm glad to see Sarah has solid support in the Jewish community. I think Obama's apporval rating in Israel is 4%.
Jewish liberalism in American goes back to their roots in Germany and Eastern Europe where the right wing parties were nationalist parties and often openly anti-semetic. The Jewish ghettoes had an urban left wing mentality that still plays a part in Jewish ethnic identity.
Also some Jews have the elitism of all the left in general. This is where David Brooks and David Frum would fall. Once you've joined the white liberal crowd, you take on their attitudes of disdain for the uneducated, which was never part of Jewish identity, and runs counter to Jewish values of respect and acceptance.
And you know there are a lot of good faith liberal Jews who believe government's job is to help the poor. It seems no amount of evidence (Detroit???) can convince these folks that their policies won't work. Yes we have to help these people and the best way to help is get government out of the way.
For those interested to learn why and how Jews become liberal, should look at the history of Jews in Eastern Europe. Sever poverty, discrimination, segregation, constant fear of “pogroms”, anti-semitic govenment created people among Jews who passionately believed in equality and social justice for Jewish people. The great example is the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. Majority of Lenin’s and Stalin’s allies were Jews.
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