ADL Survey: US Jews overwhelmingly supported Israel's Gaza action

I find it disgusting that anyone would take the ADL's word for the opinions of U.S. Jews. Perhaps we should quote the Fraser Institute polls for the opinions of Canadian workers?

I wonder how this compares to the general US population... rather bizare to survey only Jews... does anyone think approval for Israel's massacre in Gaza was much lower amongst the general American population? Given what they recieve from their media I'd be surprised if there is much of a difference.

As pointed out, the 80% [or more] support for the "appropriateness" of the Israeli attack may be an exagerration. But it doesn't sound completely out of line.

However high the level of support is among among American Jews, I agree that the level of support of ALL Americans is very high also.... way past a majority. I rather expect there isn't much difference in levels of support of among white people and that of Jews. For levels of support among people of colour I couldn't even make an educated guess.  I only know of somewhat  more criticism of Israel among African-Americans [beyond those explicitly political/activist or otherwise some kind of public community figure].

Its very daunting.

KenS wrote:

I only know of somewhat  more criticism of Israel among African-Americans [beyond those explicitly political/activist or otherwise some kind of public community figure].

I conducted a two-person poll on that issue: Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.

Valid point LTJ.

But unfortunately, I think the same overwhelming support for Israel as it has acted exists in Canada.

It doesn't matter enough that people may typically think Israel used excessive force. If in the final analysis, they think that Israel 'had to' attack Hamas/Gaza... then that is all the bloodthirsty Israeli PR machine needs.

We're of course just making educated guesses about how much of that support there is.... but from the people I talk to it looks pretty clearly like in Canada Israel won that PR war. That they had massive help from the media is immaterial to where things stand at the moment.

Stockholm wrote:

I don't think its "bizarre" at all.

I guess I should have specified that its bizarre to survey American Jews only, without data on the general US population to contrast their findings against. From a purely data collection perspective their findings have little meaning as they cannot show if American Jews differ from the general population in thier opinions on this. The only reason I can see for this is a desire to represent the position of American Jews as more supportive of Israel's Gaza massacre than your average American; a position I've already called into doubt and which their survey cannot prove since they only surveyed American Jews.

That's an excellent point. If the phoning was truly random there would be a prohibitively high rate of "not qualified" calls for every "qualified" (ie Jewish) respondent. If the phoning pool was derived from, say, the ADL's membership/contact list or other "lists of Jews" that the official Jewish community may have developed for outreach, than the result would be suspect as any such list would skew right (not suprisingly Jews who are critical of Israel are less likely to participate in Jewish commuity organizations and are also less likely to live in predominantly Jewish neighbourhoods.

Its a good question to ask of how they get a sample of American Jews. There are plenty of other surveys though that get done of small sub-samples of the population. I've seen surveys that are supposedly of gays and lesbians and they are also a very small proportion of the population and even less likely to self-identify than are Jews. I've also seen surveys published of Arab-Americans - how do you suppose they do that?

I have a hunch that the way they would do the survey would as follows: First of all there are about 6 million Jews in the US (about 2.5% of the population). But the vast majority live in either New York, Florida, California, Illinois or to a lesser extent Pennsylvania, Ohio and Massachusetts - so right off the bat - no point combing through West Virginia and Alaska and Alabama looking for Jews to interview. Then within these states there are census tracts and areas where there are much higher concentrations of Jews - so they can target the phoning into areas where there is a much higher "hit rate". They can also use computer programs to search directories for common Jewish surnames etc...

 None of these methods is perfect, but there are ways to survey a small population like American Jews without having to phon 98 people at random for every 2 that you get.

I'm going to try this again and see what people think:

1. This so-called "poll" was conducted by the Marttila Communications Group.

2. The Marttila Communications Group has no website.

3. The Marttila Communications Group is not a polling company. It describes itself as "a strategic consulting company". I have found no mention of polling as part of its mandate.

4. I have found no mention of any poll ever conducted by the Marttila Communications Group [b]except a few for the so-called Anti-Defamation League[/b].

5. I think the ADL has enough money to commission a poll (a real poll, that is) if it is so inclined.

At this point, therefore, I consider the ADL's declaration to be unsupported propaganda.

A survey of only 400 people ? Red flag.

Now I'm no pollster but if I were and I wanted to sample the Jewish population I'd most likely contact the Jewish community, say by going to a Synagogue(s) making my intentions about conducting this survey known and ask for phone numbers and a best time to call.

Were I looking to bias my survey, I might wear something like an ADL lapel pin.

Like I said I'm no pollster.

Warning...aside.

While I'm  here. On one of the Israel/Gaza thread chunks, I read that the IDF/Israeli government was actually paying people to go forth into the world of internet forums and champion the Israeli cause. I'm unable to find that information as my google-fu is weak today ans I'm wondering if someone has that link handy if they might do me the favour of reposting it.

The reason I'm asking is i highly suspect I have one of these guys on another forum and I don't want to "hurl an accusation" at him without something, at least, to back it up.

Stockholm, you make a lot of good points about how to potentially improve the sampling in the survey research. yeah, it probably would make sense not to call utah since the rate of qualified respondents would be way lower than if you called Brooklyn. And, yes, it makes sense to narrowcast it by neighbourhood to get higher response rates as well. So if you were polling in Toronto, it would make sense to call households at bathurst and Lawrence instead of households in Scarborough. the problem here, though, is that you get certain 'types" of jews more often so it can't really be an accurate sampling of the jewish population as a whole and it elimates the principle of "random probability' which is at the heart of survey research. You mentioned surveys being done with other small population groups but that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a problem; it could just mean that the SAME probelms exist in thsoe surveys. For example, if you're surveying gays, yes it makes sense to focus on areas liek Church and wellesley in Toronto or the Castro district in San Fran. But gays who consciously choose to live in predominantly gay areas may ahve different views than gays who live in Oakville. just like a Jew who chooses to live in a hasidic neighbourhood is lilely pretty different than a guy in utah who just happens to be Jewish.

When surveying "jews" too you also run into problems of how to qualify people as "Jewish." Reform, Conservative and Orthodox each have different standards as to who is a Jew according to jewish law. Does anyone with jewish ancestry count? Do Jews for Jesus? 

It's sort of like if you wanted a survey of "Blue jays fans" how do you decide who is qualified as a Blue Jay fan? Anyone who, if forced to choose, would say they prefer the jays to any other team but who've never actually seen to a game and generally hate baseball? People who've watched a game in the past year? People with season tickets? (cause those guys may actually be Yankees fans but jsut can't drive to NYC to watch a ballgame). What? How do you do that with "Jews?" Do people who've never set foot in a synogogue count the same as a talmudic scholar from Boro Park? They likely have pretty different views but the guy in Boro Park is a lot easier to reach...

Unionist, to your points about jsut who the hell is this polling company, i would offer two possibilities.

One is that it is jsut some bullshit, fly-by-night company with no credibility.

the other is that it is a legitiamte polling firm that disguised its name while doing the research. Lots of polling companies do that. Not the ones like Gallup or Ipsos who poll for the media but companies that poll for political parties or advocacy groups will often use a fake name so as not to reveal the sponsor of the research and bias the participants. If they say they're calling from Frank Luntz Research, that could be a tip-off cause Luntz is a republican pollster who works with right wing organizations. If you get a survey from them, you are safe to assume it's not being done for the Obama campaign or the AFL-CIO or Planned Parenthood.

KenS wrote:

No one except [unionist] has directly addressed the credibility of this poll, and it would seem that tacitly no one sees that it has any credibility worth speaking to.

Lots of us are questioning the credibility of the poll. Unionist's point is a good one; no one else has felt the need to repeat it but that doesn't mean we disagree. The rest have raised other reasons why this poll has no credibility, if in fact it isn't a complete fraud (which is certainly possible). 

KenS wrote:

Its just my opinion based on who I talk to that even if it isn't at 80% level- the support among American and Canadian Jews is very high; and my opinion also that even if it may not be equally high among Americans and Canadians in general, it is high enough to be the clearly dominant opinion.

Are you saying that the dominant opinion among North American Jews is support for Israel's Gaza massacre? Would you say that is different from North Americans in general? If no, why make the distinction?

Anyway, I think the views in the Jewish community are much more nuanced than the poll suggest. The poll, I think, is a propaganda exercise, much like the National Post/COMPAS polls of a few years ago - designed to produce a specific result which can be used in propaganda and, if the sponsors are lucky, also get their message into the media. The intention is not to learn what people are thinking but to try to influence their thoughts.

I expect that a plurality of American Jews did support Israel's war but I also think a substantial minority did not and that many of those who did support it had serious reservations.

Unionist: Interesting that John who conducted this "poll" is well connected to the new administration.

aka Mycroft wrote:

I expect that a plurality of American Jews did support Israel's war but I also think a substantial minority did not and that many of those who did support it had serious reservations.

I agree.  And obviously framing it as "Israel vs. Hamas" maximized the pro-Israel response.  

KenS wrote:

Unionist wrote:

My discussions with Jews indicate that the vast majority were deeply disturbed by the horrors committed in Gaza and the fact that the peace movement in Israel is in hiding.

What you say here is no more or less "groundless speculation" tha what I or others have or might offer. And I wouldn't call any of it that- its all we really have to go on.

Sorry, Ken, I was kidding in that post - just wanted to show that I could come up with just as "professional" a survey as the ADL, and more in tune with Canadians in fact.

Unionist wrote:

John Marttila is described in various places on the internet as a senior advisor to the John Kerry campaign.

And more recently to VP Biden.

Obviously, I'm not a pollster. I am, however, a medical researcher and have a pretty good understanding of quantitative research methodologies.

And, basically, the results of this poll seem meaningless. Giving a survey exclusively to Jews really doesn't tell you anything. If I'm overseeing a drug trial, only monitoring the people on that drug doesn't tell me anything. I need a control group of people NOT on teh drugs so I can compare the results. Is jewish support higher, lower or equal to the population? Without knowing that, I don't really know anything. Further, someone's religion is only one of many variables that affect their views on issues like Israel and gaza. Other factors - age, income, geography, political orientation, etc. - are also important. Are tehy more important? We ahve no way of knowing that based on these silly results and poor methodology. We'd need to run a multivariate regression analysis (wikipedia can probably explain it better than I can to people unfamiliar) where you hold certain variables constant to see if the dependent variable (supporting israel) is actually corelated to the fixed variable (being jewish). Are the views of high-income 55 year old and over politically conservative New York Jews any different thatn those of high-income 55 and older politically conservative new York Catholics? Maybe. But if not, then some otehr variable, whether age, geography, politics, etc. is obviously more important in determining how one feels about israel.

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

i think it's about as meaningful as the poll that i conducted that showed that I am, in fact, the sexiest man alive. i mean, yeah, the sample consisted of my wife but maybe I should put out a press release...

Was the polling subject offered a multiple choice?

[/quote]

Was the polling subject offered a multiple choice?

[/quote]

Well, Bush gave a multiple choice survey of "with us" or "with the terrorists." I think the ADl poll may ahve jsut cut and pasted that into the survey. I think qualitative research would be more meaningful. I mean, in a forced choice question, most would probably choose "israel" over "hamas" but that doesn't mean unequivocal support for israel.

SSC, so wait, in your poll your wife was forced to chose between you and "the terrorists"?

[quote=aka Mycroft][quote=Star Spangled Canadian]

i think it's about as meaningful as the poll that i conducted that showed that I am, in fact, the sexiest man alive. i mean, yeah, the sample consisted of my wife but maybe I should put out a press release...

[/quote]

Ah yes but in that case you're biasing the outcome by interviewing her yourself. A neutral interviewer may elicit a different response :)

[/quote]

Precisely.  I got a competely different answer.

Because American Jews determine foreign policy?

Unionist wrote:

America? Pshaw - we rule the world!

We cross-posted, by the way (I added an "ETA" to my last post).

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