https://jewishcurrents.org/are-95-of-jews-really-zionists

No matter which way you look at it, 80-90% of Americans that identify as Jewish are generally Zionist in some shape, way, or form.

Substantial majorities of American Jews respond positively to these types of questions. Pew’s 2013 survey found that 69% of American Jews were somewhat (39%) or very (30%) emotionally attached to Israel, while 31% were not very (22%) or not at all (9%) attached. Eighty-seven percent of American Jews said that caring about Israel is either essential (43%) or at least important (44%) to what being Jewish means to them. (Elements that scored higher were remembering the Holocaust, at 97%, and leading an ethical and moral life, at 94%. Statistically tied with Israel were working for justice and equality in society, at 89%, and being intellectually curious, at 85%). In a similar question on AJC’s 2020 survey, 59% of American Jews reported that being connected to Israel was a very (29%) or somewhat (30%) important part of their Jewish identity.

RECENTLY, some polls of American Jews have bucked the trend of focusing only on “emotional attachment” and have directly asked more politically laden questions about “pro-Israel” identification, starting with a survey commissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute (JEI, an affiliate of the Jewish Democratic Council of America) in the fall of 2018. Conducted by the Mellman Group, a polling firm run by Mark Mellman (now also the CEO of the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC), the poll of 800 American Jewish voters asked respondents which of the following best described them: “Generally pro-Israel and supportive of the current Israeli government’s policies” (32%); “Generally pro-Israel but also critical of some of the current Israeli government’s policies” (35%); Generally pro-Israel but also critical of many of the current Israeli government’s policies” (24%); or “Generally not pro-Israel” (3%).

In total, 92% of respondents chose one of the “generally pro-Israel” options. There was also a fifth option for a respondent having “no opinion,” which was not represented on the graph in the JEI’s report of the poll, but presumably numbers approximately 5%. The fact that the graph does not sum to 100% has led to mistakes when reporting on the poll, such as in a recent interview of Jewish Currents Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel by JTA Opinion Editor Laura E. Adkins, in which Adkins claims that this poll reported that “97% of American Jews are pro-Israel.” Presumably Adkins arrived at that figure by subtracting the 3% “not pro-Israel” from 100%. (Mellman told Jewish Currents that the “no opinion” option was not presented in the results for the sake of “simplicity.”) Three later surveys commissioned by JEI, conducted by different polling firms, showed similar results, with 88% (2019), 91% (February 2020), and 88% (September 2020) of respondents choosing one of the “generally pro-Israel” options.

In December 2019, a Ruderman Family Foundation poll, also conducted by the Mellman Group, asked this same question to a larger sample of American Jews. Ruderman called it “the most comprehensive survey of the Jewish community in the United States in recent years, and one of the largest ever.” (The sample size was 2,500 and the margin of error was 1.96%, compared to a 3,475 sample size and 3.0% margin of error in the highly regarded Pew poll.) Unlike the JEI poll, this poll sampled all American Jews, rather than Jewish voters specifically, and the results showed a significant difference in the percentage of respondents who chose a pro-Israel option. In the Ruderman poll, about 80% of the general sample of American Jews chose pro-Israel options as opposed to the average of about 90% over the three JEI surveys of American Jewish voters.

The pro-Israel answers in the Ruderman poll included a relatively even split of those who were supportive (23%), critical of some (28%), and critical of many (29%) Israeli policies. Six percent were “generally not pro-Israel,” and 14% did not have a view. Mellman said that the differences in the sample of American Jewish voters versus American Jews more broadly likely accounts for this gap between the JEI results and Ruderman results: “As with all voters, Jewish voters skew a little bit older, a little bit better educated, and obviously, more politically interested than the average Jew.”