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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   26065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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I think you don’t know a lot of religious Jews if you think they are opposed to western values. Go to an orthodox (but not ultra orthodox) and they sound a lot like your average Republican voter.

The Modern Orthodox skew strongly Democratic, though not as much as other non-Haredi Jews.

Talk to them. Understanding their beliefs. They don’t fit with progressives.

Lots of Democrats are not progressives.

Too bad for them that their elected politicians are. Or stated differently there is a chance for a realignment.

They still vote for the Democrats. And will continue to, because voting Republican (to a large and increasing extent) Just Isn't Done.

A January 2020 survey regarding Orthodox political views from the Nishma Research institute found that 53% of Modern Orthodox Jews identify as Democrat, liberal, progressive or left-leaning compared to 37% who describe themselves as Republican, conservative, right-leaning or libertarian.

They do skew Democratic, although the reason for this given by the head of the polling company is:

As a possible explanation for the overall leftward lean of the Modern Orthodox, Trencher pointed to additional 2015 polling data from the Pew Research Institute that found roughly 40% of the subset’s members to be ba’alei teshuva — those who adopt a fully observant lifestyle after having been raised not religious...When [those ba’alei teshuva] are asked if there’s anything that they do hang on to [once they start leading a more religious lifestyle], they say ‘liberal political views,'” Trencher said.

It's likely that as the born Modern Orthodox population expands significantly those politics will shift over time. There have also been some questions about Nishma's data on some Orthodox forums. There's other stuff like:

NEW YORK — An overwhelming percentage of Orthodox Jews in the United States plan to cast their ballots for President Donald Trump come November, according to a poll published Wednesday...The survey from the community’s Ami Magazine found that a whopping 83 percent of Orthodox Jews said they will vote for Trump, compared to just 13% who said they’d support the Democratic Party’s nominee, Joe Biden. Four percent of respondents are undecided, with just 20 days remaining until the election

Ami leans Chareidi but isn't exclusively so. It's a mixed bag, as the poll shows many people who call themselves Modern Orthodox are liberal Jews who were hooked by Chabad and started being religious later in life. They're not suddenly going to drop all their progressive politics because they become more faithful with age. But certainly it is true that being more religious is by far the single biggest predictor of conservative politics among Jews (as it is among whites and hispanics in many cases for that matter afaik).

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