Surveying American Jews and Their Views on Middle East Politics

This working paper takes up three related themes.
In section 1, I briefly describe the issues relevant to surveying American Jews
and highlight the importance of authoritative national surveys; in section 2, I
note that these surveys have not included much exploration of American Jewish
divisions over Israeli and American Middle East policy. In section 3, I propose
the rudiments of a sample design that would meet the traditional needs of the
national survey as well as the political opinion poll. This design is based on a
rotating national panel of respondents, somewhat like the US
government’s Current Population Survey. At the same time, data from
earlier panels can be combined to increase sample size for the study of
sociocultural issues that are less immediate in nature. Readers who are
primarily interested in the issue of polling political opinion about Israeli and
American Middle East policy may wish to read only sections 2 and 3. Those
primarily interested in the proposal for a national survey based on a rotating
panel may wish to read only section 3.