UF Study: Jewish Presidential Candidate May Generate Some Opposition

January 13, 2003

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — As many as one in 10 Florida voters feel angry at the idea of a Jewish presidential candidate, and this hostility could be repeated nationally with Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman running for the nation’s top position, a new University of Florida study shows.

“There is still a reservoir of hostility out there,” said Kenneth Wald, a UF political scientist and one of the study’s authors. “No one should assume that because Joe Lieberman did not encounter a lot of problems when he ran for vice president in 2000 that this would be the case if he ran a second time at the top of the ticket.”

In statewide telephone surveys conducted by the Florida Voter Survey organization, just 3 percent of 606 registered Florida voters said in October 2000 they were angered by a Democratic vice-presidential candidate.

However, 11 percent of 601 Florida voters said in a May and June 2002 survey they would be angered by a Jewish candidate running for president.

The researchers say they are confident the disparity found in the study exists. However, because the percentages are small and there is a margin of error, they caution there is the same degree of uncertainty as with all surveys.

Still, they say, the results likely would hold true for voters nationwide.

“Although no single state is a perfect microcosm of the entire country, Florida – from its small towns and rural areas in the north, to the retirement communities in the southeast, to the (Interstate)-4 corridor and Disney World in between – is as diverse in sociodemographic terms as any other, and its political behavior in 2000 closely mirrored the national pattern,” said Stephen Craig, a UF political scientist who led the study, which has been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of the journal Social Science Quarterly. James Kane, director of the Florida Voter Survey organization and an adjunct member of UF’s political science department also was involved in the research.

Surprising to the researchers and counter to other studies, both surveys found self-described liberals and people under age 60 were more likely than conservatives and senior citizens to react negatively to the idea of a Jewish candidate, Craig said.

“It raises questions about whether anti-Jewish sentiments are actually stronger among segments of the population that are considered to be more tolerant,” he said.

Lieberman’s distinguished U.S. Senate record and campaign performance with Gore lead some

to think the nation was ready to accept a Jewish president, much as it became accustomed to Catholic

John Kennedy in 1960, Craig said. “Much as the administration of John F. Kennedy made clear that there was little to fear from a Catholic president, Floridians in 2000 may have observed Lieberman’s demeanor, learned about his background, listened to what he had to say and decided that his religion was not an issue,” he said.

Relative indifference about a vice presidential candidate, however, may mask anti-Semitic feelings that may surface with Lieberman running at the top the ticket, Craig said. “Because the presidency is the core symbol of American government, citizens’ anxieties are more likely to be evident at that level than in their attitudes toward the vice presidency,” he said.

Indeed, many people look on 2000 as sort of a Jewish equivalent of 1960 for Catholics, said Wald, who also is director of UF’s Center for Jewish Studies. “They point to Lieberman’s nomination as a kind of equivalent watershed for Americans of Jewish descent,” he said.

Because people don’t always reveal their true opinions on sensitive topics for fear of giving socially unacceptable answers, researchers used a measuring tool called the List Experiment, which has been applied successfully to confirm hidden racism, Wald said.

“We know that black candidates almost always do worse in the voting booth than they do in public opinion polls,” he said. “Whether it’s Doug Wilder or Jesse Jackson, people tend to tell pollsters they’ll vote for blacks when in fact they don’t vote for them on Election Day.”

The researchers suspected the same would be true for Jewish candidates despite the expressed willingness of 92 percent of adults in a Gallup poll to vote for a qualified Jewish candidate for president.

“At the end of the day, when 92 percent of Americans say they are willing to consider a Jewish candidate for president, it appears from this research that’s an honest assessment,” Wald said.

In each survey, participants were divided into two groups. One group was asked to state which of four statements, such as “the way gasoline prices keep going up,” angered them. The other half responded to the same statements as well as two additional ones about Jewish candidates, specifically “a Jewish candidate running for vice president” in the 2000 study and “a Jewish candidate running for president” in the more recent.

Any difference in the average number of anger-generating statements given by the two groups was then attributed to the additional item about a Jewish candidate, Wald said. The survey did not provide a way for respondents to explain why a Jewish presidential candidate would make them angry.

“It does not appear that Al Gore’s selection of a Jewish (vice-presidential) candidate cost him much, if any, popular support in this critical battleground state,” Craig said. “But it looks like there is still some anti-Jewish sentiment out there – we don’t know how much – that might present a problem for Jewish candidates running for national office, perhaps enough to tip a very close election.”