OnePeople

US Hates Jews?

I'm doing research today. Ha'aretz runs a piece about how a bunch of Americans hate Jews, consider them in control of Wall Street, think a Jewish President would have split loyalties with regard to Israel, etc. What's remarkable, though, is not the numbers. It's the fact that the article doesn't say who ran the poll, margins of error -- nothing analytically useful is given. It's just the message that the US hates Jews. So now I'm pissed off because I have to find out where this study came from. The Ha'aretz article defers to the SF Chronicle, which attributes the "academic" survey to the San Francisco Institute for Jewish and Community Research. Halfway through the Chronicle piece, we find it was conducted in May of 2002 -- that's a little annoying. It took nine months to read a little more than 1000 responses? At the very end of the article:

The survey, which has a margin of error of 3.1 percent, was analyzed by the San Francisco institute, but administered by International Communications Research in Media, Pa.

OK, now I'm annoyed that I have to find out how credible this survey is. Read on...

OK, I don't think we're talking about an academic survey. Gary Tobin and his wife run the Institute. I'm getting the impression that it's just Gary in his garage. According to Jewish Press, Mr. Tobin has taken Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg to task for a poll underwritten by the American Jewish Committee, which stated that opinions of Israel on college campuses is not divergent from the general population. Tobin called it a "whitewash." I'm not sure why. From everything I know, though, I'm going to trust Stan Greenberg over Gary Tobin. That doesn't mean this May 2002 poll was no good, it just means that I'm getting suspicious.

Ah, here's another wierd divergence of opinion. He didn't like a survey from the United Jewish Committees that said the American Jewish population is getting older and having children later. He said the UJC study was "nonsense." He also said there were 2.5 million more Jews in the US than the UJC survey.

Ah, this JTA piece makes things a little more clear. Gary Tobin's got a bone to pick.

For all I know, his survey is right... but I'm going to wait for someone to publish another study on this before I take it for face value.

-- posted by Gunnar at January 22, 2003 05:32 PM