June 10, 2012 | 10:20 am

The Jewish vote, the June vote

Posted by Shmuel Rosner

President Obama addressing the AIPAC conference in Washington D.C., March 2012 (Photo: Reuters)

On Friday, Gallup released yet another seasonal snapshot of the current tendencies of Jewish voters (see Figure 1). The short analysis provided by Jeffrey Jones makes it clear that “Obama remains the favorite of Jewish voters but appears to be running a bit weaker ‎among them than he did in 2008, given the 10-point drop in Jewish support for him ‎compared with a five-point drop among all voters.”

For those who have a short memory, maybe it is worth reminding that 10 months ago Gallup was saying the exact opposite - that Obama’s numbers are down among Jews ‎ roportionally to the President’s decline among other groups:‎

There is little sign that President Obama is suffering disproportionately in support ‎among Jews; 54% approved of his job performance from Aug. 1-Sept. 15, 13 percentage ‎points higher than his overall 41% approval rating during that time, and similar to the ‎average 14-point gap seen throughout Obama’s term. ‎

True, comparisons can be tricky: A year ago the question was about Presidential ‎approval, and this time it is about Presidential Vote Preference. ‎

And even trickier: The Gallup table and analysis compares Obama of June 2012 to Obama of October of 2008. What happens if one compares June 2012 to June of ‎‎2008? Suddenly, Obama doesn’t look like a loser:

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As you can see in Figure 2, Jewish voters hesitated back in 2008 during the summer, and ‎only in the fall made up their minds to support Obama in far greater numbers than previously registered.

This might - or might not - happen again this year. Time will tell. And in the ‎meantime, comparing polls should be done carefully and jumping to conclusions avoided. A detailed analysis of the Jewish vote was provided to Rosner’s Domain readers about two weeks ago (read it here). Since the new Gallup numbers are very ‎similar to those provided in recent weeks by other polling groups (see here), there’s no ‎reason to alter our analysis of the possible and the probable Romney Jewish vote.

Figure 1

Figure 2

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