Israel Matzav

Young Jews more likely to vote McCain than older ones

Remember the Yenta who made the video urging young Jews to shlep to Florida to urge their grandparents to vote for Barack Hussein Obama? Remember how I said at the time that it was plausible that more young Jews would actually vote for John Sidney McCain and that the older ones would have trouble pulling the lever for a Republican because they haven't done so since the Depression? Remember how I explained why - because more young Jews have returned to their religious faith than older Jews? Here's more proof I was right.

Contrary to the perception that young people are in the bag for Obama, polls indicate that younger Jewish voters are more likely than older Jews to support Republican Sen. John McCain for president. This surprising finding most recently turned up in an October 23 analysis by Gallup polls that showed growing support for Obama among all Jews, who for a long time had been cool to the Democratic nominee.

That survey, compiled from the monthly averages of Gallup’s daily tracking polls, including interviews with more than 500 Jewish registered voters each month, found that while 74% of Jews aged 55 and over were supporting Obama, only 67% of those under 35 said they’d vote for the Democratic nominee.

“It’s counter intuitive,” said Lydia Saad, Gallup’s senior editor.

But this finding does fit into other data showing that younger Jews are trending conservative politically. A study of the 2004 Jewish vote by the Solomon Project, an effort to record Jews’ civic involvement, found younger voters were slightly more likely than older Jews to support Republican George W. Bush over Democrat John Kerry. That analysis found 23% of voters under 30 voted for Bush, compared to 20% of those ages 45 to 60 and 17% among the 60-plus crowd.

It's not at all counter-intuitive. It all has to do with religious observance.

This finding doesn’t come as much of a surprise to voters like Zach Hanover, a 19-year-old sophomore at The George Washington University who plans to vote for McCain when he casts his first ballot. Hanover, an Orthodox Jew reared in Memphis, where his father, a Democrat, would drag him to rallies with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, said his decision to be a Republican was an easy one.

“I just made a bullet list — abortion, taxes, spending, size of government — almost word for word it was the Republican platform,” said Hanover, adding that the traditional values he shares as an Orthodox Jew fit well with the values embraced by the GOP. “If you look at the biblical liturgy, the Judaic religion is about life.”

Much of the evidence pointing to Republican growth among younger Jews remains anecdotal but fits with the broader demographic trends that Hanover illustrates. Orthodox Jews represent the fastest growing segment of the Jewish community. They have more children, tend to be younger and more conservative politically than less observant Jews. Moreover, the Russian Jewish community, which also trends on the young side, is also overwhelmingly more politically conservative. Voters who are more religiously observant, regardless of denomination, tend to support more conservative political candidates.

“When you add that up, the two most Republican segments of the (Jewish) population are younger,” said Jonathan Sarna, a Brandeis University professor who has studied the Jewish vote.

These more conservative younger Jews are frequently more free-market oriented, less tied to the big government New Deal programs such as Social Security that older generations of Jews embrace, and more hawkish when it comes to national security and Israel.

We can still hope that will help John McCain this year, and in any event, the increasingly Orthodox population bodes well for the Republican party in the future.

The bottom picture at the top is of a Presidential election debate held at Yeshiva University, an Orthodox institution. The top picture is an older couple who support Obama.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:51 PM