Religion & Beliefs

American Jews Aren’t Quite As Hated As Previously Thought

In November, Gallup did a poll of 1,002 Americans, asking them their feelings on three "minority religions" – that would be the Muslims, the Buddhists, and us. This week, they released the findings. Among them: 71 percent report having a … Read More

By / January 25, 2010

In November, Gallup did a poll of 1,002 Americans, asking them their feelings on three "minority religions" – that would be the Muslims, the Buddhists, and us. This week, they released the findings. Among them:

  • 71 percent report having a "positive" opinion about Jews, including 25 percent who have "very positive" opinions. (Does this remind anyone else of the bit on the final Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien where Steve Carell came out in character as Michael Scott to do Conan’s exit interview and only gave him the choices "positive," "very positive," and "extremely positive"? Just me then? Okay.)
  • 15 percent admitted to having some negative feelings about Jews.
  • 19 percent of respondents do not actually know any Jewish people.

Somehow, I don’t find these results terribly shocking. What I’d really love to know is whether those 19 percent of people who don’t know any of Teh Jooz had positive or negative opinions of us. My guess is actually going to be that the people who don’t know any Jews presumably live in rural areas in places like the Deep South and therefore love Jews in theory because they’re evangelical Christians and therefore think the Jews are the Chosen People. Obviously, my own experiences growing up in the South around evangelicals are influencing me on this one, but I’d love to see a more specific breakdown of the study with an emphasis on geographical regions.

Anyway, the next time Abe Foxman goes on yet another one of his "everyone’s an antisemite!!1!#@!" rages, someone should be ready in the wings to hand him a copy of these survey results.

 

 

  • Kokapelye

    The link above (“they released the findings”) does not go anywhere. Since the URL listed the Jerusalem Post, I checked there. Bupkes.

    I was able to find something at Gallup.com. This survey was conducted between 31 October and  13 November, 2009, and polled 1002 Americans, so I assume it is the survey Lilit cited, but there’s a disjunction between the numbers from Gallup.com and the above article. I can understand where Lilit derived the 71 percent “positive” and 15 percent ”negative,” but I have no idea where the “19 percent of respondents do not actually know any Jewish people” came from. It’s nowhere in the Gallup data:  only 4 percent did not know or refused to give an opinion about Judaism, and all subjects responded to the question about prejudice toward Jews. I’ll give Lilit the benefit of a doubt and assume the 19 percent came from the MIA article from the Jerusalem Post.

    The Gallup survey did not offer “neutral” among the five response options, and one of these options was “Don’t know/Refused.” Neither did it report whether the respondents knew any Jews [or Muslims or Christians or Buddhists]. The ±3.4 percent sampling error refers to the expected amount the proportions found in the sample could vary from the proportions in the target population (given a 95% confidence interval). The sum of the proportions of the sample should add up to very close to 100 percent. That’s how rounding works. If not, something is wrong.

  • MiriamRiver

    There is no reason to add 71, 15, and 19. The survey presumably offered a continuum of feelings about Jews, probably something like: "very positive", "positive", "neutral", "negative", "very negative". The percentage of people responding to those categories would be expected to add to 100 (taking into account the 3.4% margin of error reported in the article). The question of whether or not a respondent knows any Jews was separate; the corresponding percentage would have been the percentage of respondents who do know a Jew and would be expected to be 81%.

  • Kokapelye

    Seventy-one plus 15 plus 19 adds up to 105. For three categories, there’s not nearly enough rounding error to account for the extra 5 percent. Some of the respondents have formed their opinions of Jews without actually meeting any of us.