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American Jews and the Presidential Vote*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Lawrence H. Fuchs
Lawrence H. Fuchs
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
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Extract

It has been generally agreed since the publication of Professor Holcombe's The New Party Politics that the urbanization of American society has tended to produce class differences in our politics. The sectional alignments of the 19th century gave way to class and urban-rural politics in considerable measure as Americans continued to move to the cities. By the 1932 and 1936 elections there was a marked tendency for wealth and high prestige to be associated with Republican choice.

Paradoxically, the most urban of all our citizens, American Jews, have not divided their presidential vote along class lines. As a group they rapidly improved their jobs, extended their incomes, and became highly educated during the 1930's and 1940's. At the same time, they drastically switched their predominant major party choice from the Republican party to the Democrats. And within the group itself differences in income or occupational prestige appear to have been of practically no significance in the formulation of presidential vote preference since 1936.

The purpose of this article is threefold: first, to trace briefly the shifts in Jewish vote preference in recent decades through the use of aggregate election statistics; second, to probe the significant motivations of Jewish voters in 1952, primarily by analyzing the results of a sample survey conducted after the 1952 election in the city of Boston; and third, to suggest some of the basic reasons for Jewish resistance to class influences at the polls.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 1955 , pp. 385 - 401
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1955

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References

1 Holcombe, Arthur N., The New Party Politics (New York, 1933)Google Scholar. See also ProfessorHolcombe's, The Middle Class in American Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1940)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ogburn, W. F. and Hill, Estelle, “Income Classes and the Roosevelt Vote in 1932”, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 50, pp. 186–93 (June, 1935)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Ogburn, W. F. and Coombs, L. C., “The Economic Factor in the Roosevelt Election”, this Review, Vol. 34, pp. 719–27 (Aug., 1940)Google Scholar.

3 Nearly all of these data are based upon original research.

4 The literature on this subject is rich. See Hillquit, Morris, Loose Leaves from a Busy Life (New York, 1934)Google Scholar; Rogoff, Harry, An East Side Epic: The Life and Work of Meyer London (New York, 1930)Google Scholar; and Waldman, Louis, Labor Lawyer (New York, 1944)Google Scholar.

5 The Denver results are analyzed by Korchin, Samuel J., “Psychological Variables in the Behavior of Voting”, unpub. diss. (Harvard University, 1946)Google Scholar. The Gallup results are presented and analyzed by Wesley, and Allinsmith, Beverly, “Religious Affiliation and Politico-Economic Attitude”, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 12, pp. 377–89 (Fall, 1948)Google Scholar, and by Pope, Liston, “Religion and Class Structure”, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 256, pp. 84–92 (March, 1948)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also an unpublished study by Bower, Robert T., “Voting Behavior of American Ethnic Groups”, New York: Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University (Sept., 1944)Google Scholar.

6 Allinsmith, , “Religious Affiliation and Politico-Economic Attitude”, p. 385Google Scholar. Jews were first in occupational status, third in educational status, and fourth in economic status. Pope, , “Religion and Class Structure”, pp. 84–91Google Scholar, lists Jews as first in occupational status and fourth on his income and education indices. “Distribution (by classes) of the Jewish group is very much like that of Episcopalians; a majority of the members of both still come from the middle and upper classes …” (p. 86).

7 Bower, , “Voting Behavior of American Ethnic Groups”, p. 16Google Scholar; Korchin, , “Psychological Variables in the Behavior of Voting”, p. 93 and pp. 184 ffGoogle Scholar. See also Havemen, Ernest and West, Patricia S., They Went to College (New York, 1952)Google Scholar, an analysis of a Time magazine survey of 9,483 college graduates. The Jewish graduates, though earning more money in better jobs than the Gentiles, were far less Republican. Only six per cent of the Jews called themselves Republicans (pp. 187–88).

8 Campbell, Angus, Gurin, Gerald, and Miller, Warren E., The Voter Decides (Evanston, Ill., 1954), pp. 70–73Google Scholar. See also Harris, Louis, Is There a Republican Majority? (New York, 1954), p. 161Google Scholar. As Mr. Harris reports, the Democratic loss was a Progressive and not a Republican gain.

9 Harris, , Is There a Republican Majority?, pp. 160–63Google Scholar. The Roper organization reports that 74 per cent of the Jewish vote went to the Governor. There were 52 Jews in the Survey Research Center sample, 73 per cent of whom preferred Stevenson.

10 Parten, Mildred, Surveys, Polls, and Samples: Practical Procedures (New York, 1950), pp. 266–67Google Scholar. The procedure described in these pages under the heading “Sampling at Regular Intervals from a List” was the one followed in the Ward 14 survey. Miss Parten calls this type of sampling “Quasi-random” (p. 303) and suggests that the method, if executed carefully, “seems close enough to random sampling” to permit the use of confidence limits which can be estimated for pure random samples.

11 It is always possible that the scales, which were elaborately worked out and pretested, are something less than a perfect measure of Jewishness. Eighteen questions in all were asked. For example, respondents were asked to rate the importance of such religious practices as saying prayers for dead parents. They were also asked to rate their approval or disapproval of such things as intermarriage and to state whether or not they regularly read a Yiddish newspaper, kept a Kosher home, etc. While the results here show that Democratic Jews are just about as Jewish as Republican Jews, the findings of Berelson, Bernard R., Lazarsfeld, Paul F., and McPhee, William N., Voting (Chicago, 1954), p. 72Google Scholar, are somewhat different. The authors found that in Elmira, New York those Jews expressing a strong commitment to Judaism were more Democratic than those Jews with low EI. The number of Jews involved was 108, less than half the number in the Boston survey, but sizable. However, certain sub-groups are quite small. Those Jews who neither attended services nor favored orthodox customs numbered only 12. Still the results may be quite sound. In Elmira, Jewish involvement may have correlated significantly with Democratic choice in 1948, while in Ward 14 no such correlation was forthcoming for 1952. However, even in Elmira, Republican choice among Jews may be less a function of low EI than a function of primary group contact with non-Jews. Probably both factors go somewhat together. Those Jews with low EI probably go to non-Jewish neighborhoods and participate in non-Jewish groups more than those with high EI Those Jews who for one reason or another have frequent contact with non-Jews probably become less orthodox as a result. If both results are correct, Elmira Jews must be different from Ward 14 Jews in some important respect. It is likely that the difference lies in the sheer concentration of Ward 14 Jews. Even the low EI Jews in Ward 14 live in an intensely Jewish community. Outside of such sociological enclaves, it might well be that the EI scale used here would be a significant separator of Republicans and Democrats.

12 It is recognized that the word “liberalism,” like the word “class,” is bound to be controversial when injected into any discussion of American politics. I am not at all certain that the definition of liberalism used in this survey is a useful one. Criteria which measure altruism in politics do not measure those elements of political ideology which have relevance in shaping the electoral choices of most voters. Later the liberalism of the Jews will be discussed in terms of specific issues.

13 Allport, Gordon W., “The Composition of Political Attitudes”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 25, pp. 220–38 (Sept., 1939)Google Scholar. See also Allinsmith, , “Religious Affiliation and Politico-Economic Attitudes”, pp. 379–80Google Scholar; Haveman, and West, , They Went to College, pp. 98–101Google Scholar. All studies emphasize the egalitarianism or liberalism of the Jews.

14 Harris, , Is there a Republican Majority?, pp. 161–63Google Scholar.

15 Campbell, Gurin, and Miller, , The Voter Decides, p. 70Google Scholar. The Roper organization found that women were generally more attracted to Eisenhower than men. Harris, Is There a Republican Majority?, Ch. 7.

16 Bower, , “Voting Behavior of American Ethnic Groups”, p. 11Google Scholar and Korchin, , “Psychological Variables in the Behavior of Voting”, p. 97Google Scholar.

17 As Campbell, Gurin, and Miller, , The Voter Decides, p. 207Google Scholar, point out, even in Lazarsfeld's “explanation of the influence of the demographic characteristics (of voters) these are primary group influences …” See Lazarsfeld, Paul, Berelson, Bernard, and Gaudet, Hazel, The People's Choice (New York, 1948)Google Scholar, Ch. 16.

18 In the Ward 14 survey respondents were not asked for the votes of their spouses, but in a pilot survey of the parents of Brandeis College students which preceded the Ward 14 survey, many of the respondents were married. The results of that survey are as incredible as those for Ward 14. Of the 33 men who voted, only 23 said they chose Stevenson (69.8 per cent). Of the 26 women voting from the Brandeis parents' sample 24 voted for Stevenson (92.3 per cent). Of course, confidence limits cannot be applied to the results of such a survey, but the respondents constituted a cross-section of American upper-middle class Jewry. The average family income of respondents was over $6,500.

19 Of course, it is impossible to know just how many non-Jews there are at Brandeis. While the number is growing all the time, the percentage quoted here is probably correct within five per cent for 1952.

20 It ought to be pointed out that the Wallace stand on Zionism was unequivocal, while some Jews were unconvinced that Truman was a firm Zionist.

21 Roper, Elmo, “American Attitudes on International Organization”, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 7, pp. 405–35, at p. 410 (Winter, 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Allinsmith, , “Religious Affiliation and Politico-Economic Attitudes”, p. 379Google Scholar.

23 Haveman, and West, , They Went to College, pp. 98–99Google Scholar.

24 Lubell, Samuel, The Future of American Politics (New York, 1952), pp. 96–97Google Scholar.

25 Harris, , Is There a Republican Majority?, p. 162Google Scholar.

26 For a discussion of prestige and social-distance scales, see Sherif, Muzafer and Sherif, Carolyn W., Groups in Harmony and Tension (New York, 1953), pp. 78–79Google Scholar. Bogardus and others have consistently shown since 1926 that Jews are thought of by all other ethnic groups as an undesirable group to live with, to marry, or to work with.

27 A more complete discussion of the relevance of Jewish group values to political behavior will be forthcoming in the author's book on the subject.

28 When asked whether they ought to help pay for the roads and education of the people in Kentucky, 56.9 per cent of the Jews and 39.8 per cent of the Christians agreed that they should. When asked whether they ought to be taxed to help raise standards of living in Asia and Africa, 44.5 per cent of the Jews and 28.9 per cent of the Christians agreed that they should.

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