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Exit poll: McCain in a landslide! (in Israel)
The room was packed this morning. The television cameras were rolling. The first exit poll of the 2008 U.S. presidential election, we were told, was about to be released. And the findings:
McCain 76 percent; Obama 24 percent. An exit poll, that is, of American Jews living in Israel and casting absentee ballots.
“I’m shocked that it’s three to one,” said Mitchell Barak, an Israeli-American pollster who formerly worked for conservative Israeli governments.
The survey found that large numbers of registered Democrats and independents voted for McCain. Over half the surveyed voters said they had an “extremely unfavorable” impression of Obama.
The journalists were skeptical.
“Does this mean there will be a surprise on Nov. 4?” one woman asked.
“I have no idea,” Barak said.
If anything, the results tell us that Orthodox Jews prefer McCain. And that’s not a surprise.
While the sample of 817 Americans who voted absentee might be somewhat representative of the American Jewish community in Israel, it does not reflect American Jewry.
Some 70 percent of the voters in the sample described themselves as Orthodox. They voted overwhelmingly for McCain. In the United States, 10 percent of Jews are Orthodox. Less than two percent of Americans are Jewish.
Just 8 percent of the sample described themselves as secular, which would represent the majority of Jewish voters in the United States. Fifty-nine percent of those voters preferred Obama.
The top concerns of voters here — foreign policy, Israel, Iran — are also different than the top concern of voters, Jewish and non-Jewish, at home — the economy. Obama scores highest among voters in the United States who rate the economy as their No. 1 concern.
Still, the exit poll gave Republicans in Israel cause for optimism.
“Here, we have actual results. I think that’s significant,” McCain supporter and attorney Abe Katsman, 43, told me. “I know what the polls say, but this poll is different.”
Comments
By Russell
October 30, 2008 5:36 PM | Link to this
Most American Jews living in Israel are extreme orthodox, many are settlers in the West Bank from Brooklyn, NY. They radical, the want the return to the “solomon empire”. They dont want peace, they want war. McCain can never bring peace in the Middle East. Arabs to not trust him.