WASHINGTON – Jewish voters in the crucial swing state of Ohio are nearly evenly
split over US President Barack Obama’s handing of Iran’s nuclear program, the
only issue on which they come down almost equally divided in a new American
Jewish Committee survey.
The telephone poll of 238 registered Jewish
voters in the last half of September, found that 46 percent approved of how
Obama has dealt with Iran while 40% disapproved – 8% somewhat disapproving and
32% strongly disapproving. The survey has a +/-6.4% margin of error.
On
every other issue surveyed – including national security, the economy and health
care – more than half of Ohio Jewish voters approved of Obama’s
policies.
The only other subject that came close to the numbers on Iran
was that of US-Israel relations, where 54% approved and 36%
disapproved.
The poll is the third recent survey of Jewish voters
conducted by the AJC in the past month, with the others devoted to the swing
state of Florida and the national population.
Ohio Jews are to the right
of the groups in the other two surveys, with 28% identifying as conservative as
opposed to 20% of Florida Jews and 18.7% of American Jews generally. Other
questions in the survey also demonstrated Ohio Jews’ more rightward
posture.
Still, in the Ohio survey, Obama fared as well as he did in the
national survey, winning almost precisely the same amount of the vote – 64%.
Republican candidate Mitt Romney did receive slightly more support, at 29%, to
the amount he received nationally (24%). In Florida the Obama/Romney split was
69-25.
Those numbers are significantly better for Obama than among the
average Ohio population, where recent polls put his support in the low 50s,
compared to Romney in the mid-40s.
But the Jewish backing is still
significantly less than the approximately 74% of the vote Obama garnered in
2008, which could be a meaningful margin in a place like Ohio where the result
could be razor-thin.
The two candidates were to face off in their first
debate on Wednesday night, which was billed as focusing primarily on domestic
policy before the recent anti- American violence in Libya, Egypt and other parts
of the Middle East broke out.
Those events raised the possibility of some
reference to foreign affairs, though international issues are slated to get more
attention in the remaining two debates later in October.
Peter Brown,
assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, told a
foreign press briefing on Tuesday that the debates could shake up the
race.
“They can be a big deal,” he said. “What people tend to remember is
goofs by candidates.
But a candidate who needs to pick up a few points,
if he were to dominate the debate, it might help him.” Brown noted that 90% of
voters say they’re planning to watch the exchange, and while he was skeptical
that all of them would tune in, he estimated it would still be an audience of
some 50 million people.
“It’s clearly Romney’s best opportunity in the
remaining time,” Brown said, alluding to the fact that Romney is now behind in
the race according to polls.
“Whether it changes things or not, we’ll
see. But it is an opportunity.”