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Trump or Biden — How Did Jewish Voters Line
Up This Year? It’s Complicated.

NATIONAL GABRIEL GRESCHLER | J. THE JEWISH
NEWS OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
HOW DID JEWS VOTE this
year? It depends on which
pollster you ask, apparently.

Exit polls from this week’s
presidential election show that
a large majority of Jews voted
Democratic, as they have done in
the past, choosing Joe Biden over
Donald Trump by a wide margin.

But results also indicated that
more Jews — as many as 250,000
nationwide — voted for Trump
than they did four years ago.

However, the exact break-
down of Jewish votes has
stirred disagreement.

An exit poll of 800 people
released by J Street, a liberal Jewish
Middle East advocacy group,
showed Jews supporting Biden at
77% versus 21% for Trump.

The Republican Jewish
Coalition released its own exit
poll showing numbers that were
more favorable for their candi-
date. Of 600 people polled, Jews
supported Biden 60.6% vs. 30.5%
for Trump, with 8.8% either
voting third party or declining
for Biden at 68% and Trump
at 30%.

Arielle Levites, a social
scientist who works at George
Washington University,
attributed the discrepancy to
each poll capturing a different
population of Jews.

“A very obvious reason why
these polls may have produced
different results is that they
screen-in respondents using
different criteria,” Levites said.

For example, if a poll includes
Jews who describe themselves as
“culturally Jewish,” then the data
will skew left. That’s because
nonreligious or religiously
unaffiliated people are much
more likely to vote Democrat.

Levites noted that the J
Street exit poll used the same
methods as the Pew Research
Center’s 2013 “A Portrait of
Jewish Americans” study, with
its more expansive definition of
who is a Jew. That’s the major
reason, she said, why the data
for J Street’s exit poll may show
more support for Biden.

RJC’s results didn’t include
great detail about method-
ology; the individuals surveyed
“describe themselves as
A very obvious reason why these polls may
have produced different results is that they
screen-in respondents using different criteria.”
narrower range of Jewish voters,
thus showing different results.

Is it possible to tell which
one is most accurate?
Ken Goldstein, a politics
professor and polling expert at
the University of San Francisco,
agrees that polling methods
that include explicit parameters
about who is a Jew will certainly
result in different outcomes.

But Goldstein, who has
worked decision desks on
election night for the last two
decades, does believe that the AP
survey, which is not party-affili-
ated and shows an approximately
70-30 Biden-Trump split among
Jewish voters, may be closest to
the mark.

“From data I’ve seen over the
course of the year, my sense is
that the answer is closer to that
AP VoteCast,” Goldstein said.

If that is the case, then
Trump expanded his base of
Jewish voters from four years
ago by roughly 5%. One other
data point that supports this
theory is the overall shift
among minority voters, who
moved slightly toward Trump,
said retired professor of Jewish
communal studies Steven
Windmueller of Hebrew Union
College in Los Angeles.

“Whether we would insert
Jews into that consideration,
it depends on how we define
ourselves,” Windmueller said.

He was surprised by how
many Jews voted for Trump
in this election, especially
because he anticipated a defec-
tion of “Never Trump” Jewish
Republicans. “But now as you look at some
of the data from these surveys,”
Windmueller said, “it appears
he’s picked up some additional
support in the Jewish commu-
nity. The first question is, what
happened to these ‘Never
Trump’ Republican Jews?” He
speculated that another group
of Jewish voters might have
replaced them. “Democrats?
Independents? New voters? Or
a growing number of Orthodox
voters?” he asked.

The growth in numbers of
Jews voting Republican was
discussed at a Nov. 4 RJC press
conference to provide its poll
findings. Media consultant
Ari Fleischer, who served as
White House press secretary
under George W. Bush, said the
“conclusion” suggested by these
numbers is that “it’s not just
the embassy that moved. Jewish
voters have moved, too. And
they’re moving Republican.”
He was referring, of course,
to this administration’s decision
to move the U.S. Embassy from
Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which
was very popular among Jews in
this country and in Israel.

The Jewish vote for Trump
also was historically high in
Florida, where both the RJC
poll and a New York Times/AP
exit poll showed 41% voting
Republican. That validated the RJC’s
outreach efforts in Florida, said
RJC Executive Director Matt
Brooks. The group spent half of
its $10 million national budget
in the state, and Florida’s Jews
helped win it for Trump, he
asserted. “Going into this election,
we said there are three big
states for us,” he said. “Florida,
Florida and Florida.” l
This article first appeared in J. The
Jewish News of Northern California.

J. Editor Sue Fishkoff contributed to
this report.

Name: Samson Wealth Management
Width: 5.5 in
Depth: 3.62 in
Color: Black plus one
Comment: JE
ARIELLE LEVITES
to disclose how they voted.

The difference does matter:
A 10% variance in the Jewish
vote represents more than
500,000 voters, according to
estimates from the Associated
Press. It also could determine
whether one party or the other
gained or lost Jewish voters
since the election in 2016.

So, who is right?
To start off, the authorita-
tive Associated Press’ VoteCast
survey, which is different from
an exit poll, found Jews voting
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Jewish.” However, one small
factor may reveal why the RJC
results skewed slightly more to
the right. RJC’s poll included
phone calls, which are known
to push the sample population
toward older voters and thus
create a more conservative data
set. J Street first texted voters,
asking if they would complete
the survey by phone or online.

While AP does not share
how it determines who quali-
fies for a Jewish poll, Levites
suspects the data came from a
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JEWISH EXPONENT
NOVEMBER 12, 2020
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