By Adam Pagnucco.
In Part One, we began discussing how issues related to Israel and the Palestinians intersect with MoCo politics. Part Two looked at the views of the candidate who is so far at the epicenter of the issue: Josie Caballero. Here is the key question:
What do MoCo Democratic voters think? And how much do they care?
In the absence of specific polling, this is hard to say. Back in September, I printed the following.
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Views of Israel have been changing rapidly among Democratic voters over the last two years. Recent polls by Quinnipiac, the Economist/YouGov and Gallup have found large majorities of Democrats disapproving of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. The Washington Post recently chronicled growing resistance by Congressional Democrats to further arms sales to Israel. And Senators Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks and Congressman Jamie Raskin have all gone on record as supporting limits on at least some arms sales to Israel.
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Note that the above comments rely on national polling. If I were a local candidate, I would absolutely ask MoCo primary-voting Democrats about this issue in a poll. Even if voters care about it one way or the other (and I bet there’s a split), how would it rank in comparison to other issues like education, transportation, affordability and housing?
There is one prominent group of MoCo voters to whom issues connected to Israel will always matter: Jewish voters. What role do they play in county politics?
Examining the relationship of faith and voting (not just for Jews) is one of the most challenging data issues in politics. It’s unusual for federal government data series like those maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau to contain any data on faith. Voters don’t report their faith when they register to vote. Polls are sporadic and limited by sample size. Anecdotes rule, a frustrating situation for any researcher.
A widely circulated rule of thumb in MoCo’s political community is that Jews account for 10 percent of the county’s population. The Berman Jewish Data Bank estimates that the Frederick-Gaithersburg-Rockville metro area (comprising Frederick and Montgomery counties) had 1,028,142 adults and 92,100 Jewish adults in 2020. The Public Religion Research Institute estimates that Jews accounted for 9% of MoCo’s population in 2020. (It estimated the share of Muslims at 3%.) I can’t vouch for the methodology of these organizations but let’s just recognize that there are a non-negligible number of Jewish people in MoCo.
Additionally, there is some evidence from recent national polling that more than two-thirds of Jews align with Democrats (with the exception of Orthodox Jews), about half of Jews describe themselves as liberals and Jews tend to have higher than average turnout rates.
All of the above suggests that Jews have an amplified role in MoCo’s Democratic primaries that goes above their percentage of the population.
I have made two attempts to measure the role of Jews in MoCo Dem primaries. Both of them were limited by problematic data.
First, I was once able to use a combination file of voter data, emails and consumer data (which is commonly distributed by email marketing firms) to look at Jewish voting in the 2018 Democratic primary. My overall impressions were that MoCo Jewish Democrats had high turnout rates, accounted for a disproportionate percentage of regular primary voters, tended to be older than other voters, were more likely to be homeowners than other voters, and were concentrated in Potomac, Chevy Chase, Leisure World and high-income precincts. They were fewer in number overall than MoCo Black Democrats but comparable to them in terms of number of regular voters. In other words, they were not a dominant group but they were more than capable of swinging a close county election if voting as a bloc. (Let’s not assume that they do vote as a bloc!)
Second, I know of 45 Jewish faith institutions in the county. Together, they are located in 37 voting precincts of which 7 have more than one institution. The most common locations of these institutions are Rockville, Silver Spring, Potomac and Bethesda. In the 2022 Democratic primary, precincts with at least one Jewish faith institution recorded a combined 40% turnout rate while precincts without them had a combined 35% turnout rate.
That’s not all. In the county executive race, Marc Elrich defeated David Blair in precincts without Jewish faith institutions by 40-38%. But Blair defeated Elrich in precincts with one Jewish faith institution by 42-37%. And in the seven precincts with more than one Jewish institution, Blair beat Elrich by 49-34%.
That said, the data above is highly problematic because while the presence of a Jewish faith institution in a precinct suggests the presence of Jewish voters, there will inevitably be an awful lot of non-Jews living there too. There will also be many Jews living outside of these precincts. So this data is rougher than sandpaper.
One more noteworthy fact is that MoCo Jewish voters do not have a political organization that participates in elections. The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, headed by the indomitable Ron Halber, is an aggressive advocate for Jewish residents on government policy issues. But it’s also a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that does not directly play in elections. The absence of an openly political organization hinders the Jewish community’s ability to vote as a bloc, which is the objective of every effective political group.
As incomplete as the above data is, I generally buy into the narrative that Jewish voters play an outsized role in MoCo politics. There are enough indicators of their presence in the Democratic Party, their turnout rate and their concentration in key voting areas to cause any candidate to treat them with respect. Candidates should consider these factors when taking positions on Israel and related issues.