Matthew Yglesias » A Job for Norm

Jan 22nd, 2009 at 11:00 am

A Job for Norm

Norm Coleman’s still fighting for the Minnesota Senate seat he already lost, but he’s also taken new employment as a consultant to the Republican Jewish Committee. The RJC is extremely good at getting the press to write stories every four years about Jewish voters turning against the Democrats. It’s not so good at actually getting Jewish voters to turn against the Democrats, who regularly get 75-80 percent of the Jewish vote.

Comments
21

Filed under: Jews, Norm Coleman,

21 Responses to “A Job for Norm”

Gigi Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:18 am
They’ve got Coleman. We’ve got Sara Silverman
Neue Internetprasenz Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:20 am
Didn’t Robert Stack beat up one of their representatives in “Airplane!”? No, wait, that was Jews for Jesus.
Don Williams Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:25 am
Both the Democratic and the Republican leadership care ONLY for the Jews with a $1 Billion+ net worth.

The rest are..er..chopped liver. Unpaid extras in the movie
“The Life of Brian”.
Steve Sailer Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:46 am
Younger Jewish voters (under 45) vote more Republican than their parents. For example, in the 2002 House election, 36% of Jews under 45 voted for the GOP candidate versus only 14% among older ones. But it’s not clear if that is a permanent change or just a life cycle phenomenon. Paul Johnson’s “A History of the Jews” noted a venerable pattern of worldly young Jews becoming more ethnocentric and returning to traditional ethnic loyalties as they age, and the Democratic Party certainly qualifies as a traditional Jewish ethnic loyalty.
Adam Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
“For example, in the 2002 House election, 36% of Jews under 45 voted for the GOP candidate versus only 14% among older ones.”

Why did you use 2002, Steve? Certainly this data should exist for the three elections since then.
tomemos Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Plus, since when is 45 the over-under for “younger Jews”? 18-34 is generally the dividing line I’ve seen. Some cherry-picking here, methinks.
Neil the Ethical Werewolf Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:25 pm
IIRC, the 30-45 folks are especially likely to be Republican.
Neil the Ethical Werewolf Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I mean the age bracket in general, not just Jews.
Steve Sailer Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:02 pm
“Why did you use 2002, Steve? Certainly this data should exist for the three elections since then.”

Esoteric exit poll crosstabs such as Religion by Age are not normally published, so I had to crunch the numbers myself using the 2002 raw data.

I was able to buy the 2002 raw data because the exit poll aggregating software crashed on Election Night 2002. So in 2003, the raw data was put on sale. I bought the raw data on disk and crunched it myself. (The only other people I know of who did that were Ruy Texeira and the AP stringer.) That allowed me to do crosstabs (such as religion by age) that aren’t published online for other years.

If you are interested, here is my 2003 write-up of the lessons from the long-lost 2002 exit poll.

http://www.isteve.com/2002_Election_Exit_Polls.htm
Steve Sailer Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
I used age 45 as the dividing line because that allowed me to have two groups with large enough sample sizes to be significant. There aren’t that many young Jewish voters, just as there aren’t that many young voters in general, especially in nonglamorous midterm elections like 2002. The median age of voters in midterm elections is around 50.
Steve Sailer Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Older Jews tend to be highly distinctive in their voting behavior — Marvin Himmelfarb famously said in the 1960s that “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.”

Younger Jews tend more than older Jews to vote like other affluent, educated whites.

The interesting question is whether that’s a permanent change or more of a lifestage difference. (It’s kind of like how in the Soviet Union, the government would scoff, “Nobody goes to church except old ladies,” but every generation there were new old ladies in church.)

Paul Johnson, in his 1985 “A History of the Jews” gave a long list of prominent Jews from Heine onward who saw themselves as assimilated and nonethnic when they were young men, but then became more ethnocentric and concerned with Jewish identity as they aged. It’s not hard to come up with various neocons and neolibs who fit that pattern.
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Matt Yglesias

A Job for Norm

21 Responses to “A Job for Norm”

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