Israeli think tank Jewish People Policy Institute's poll makes US Jews appear to be more pro war than they actually are

https://jewishcurrents.org/a-poll-muddles-the-picture-of-what-american-jews-think


A Navy fighter returning from a mission in support of the US attack on Iran on March 2. American Jews are divided on the Iran war.

Early Monday, the news in the Jewish press was that American Jews overwhelmingly supported the new US and Israeli war on Iran. A poll conducted by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), an Israel-based think tank with close ties to the Jewish federation system in the US, had found that 68% of what it calls “connected” US Jews backed the war. The subject line of JTA’s daily newsletter that morning read: “US Jews more supportive of Iran war than Americans overall, poll finds.” The new poll seemed to offer important evidence in support of the Jewish establishment’s pro-war stance. Jewish establishment groups have tried to present American Jews as broadly supportive of the war, even as Americans in general overwhelmingly oppose it.

It’s not the first time that JPPI has produced data that conveniently proves that American Jews agree with the leaders of the American Jewish establishment. In November, weeks after Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoralty despite the vociferous opposition of the city’s mainstream Jewish leaders, JPPI announced that its survey had found that “the predominant emotion among American Jews following Mamdani’s win is concern.” The results of JPPI ’s surveys of US Jews, which it conducts monthly, are widely reported in Jewish outlets like the Jerusalem Post and JTA. But what JPPI is measuring with these surveys is not the opinion of American Jews in general, but rather the opinion of the American Jews it decided to solicit.

JPPI says its polls are tracking the views of “connected” American Jews. Its methodology is dramatically different from polls like the Washington Post survey of American Jewish opinion on the Gaza war from last fall, for example, which built out a random sample of around 800 Jewish Americans, and then weighted their responses to match the demographics of the American Jewish community at large, as measured by the gold-standard Pew Research Center report on American Jews from 2020. The JPPI poll looks nothing like that. The think tank has gathered a group of around 700 American Jewish volunteers who it polls each month. It describes the panel as “a group whose degree of connection to the Jewish people, the Jewish community, Jewish institutions, Jewish identity, and/or Israel is strong,” but offers few details on how it found them.

One of the authors of the survey, the journalist Shmuel Rosner, a fellow at JPPI, told Jewish Currents that the panel was recruited through “various means including emails, social media, newsletters, prizes etc.” A person on JPPI’s panel who spoke with Jewish Currents said that they had been recruited through their local Jewish federation, which invited them to an online meeting to hear about the project. JPPI doesn’t weight the responses to its surveys to match the demographics of American Jews at large, but only to maintain the consistency of the panel from month to month. “JPPI’s KolHaam poll does not reflect US Jewish opinion,” Rosner said, using the Hebrew name of the survey, which is referred to in English as the Voice of the Jewish People Index. “It reflects the view of a group we call ‘connected Jews,’” Rosner said.

snip