Data Analysis: 21% Dem Primary Voters are Jewish; Orthodox Are 5%, Over Quarter is from Williamsburg

How many Jews are expected to participate in the upcoming NYC democratic primary? And how many of them will be Orthodox? The answer to these questions ranged wildly in recent months. By quantifying the number of Jewish and Orthodox voters, backed up by hard data, I hope to bring some clarity to the issue.

My analysis, detailed below, is based on Prime NY's finding that 138,227 democrats with identifiable Jewish names voted on at least one primary during the last four calendar years. Further breaking down these numbers to their respective zip codes, I presume that 31,716 Orthodox Jews voted in at least one primary, which bring their share of the total democratic primary vote to over 4.85 percent.

Zeroing in to the specific neighborhoods, the largest Orthodox vote by far - 8,967 votes, over 28.25 percent - comes from Williamsburg. Its Orthodox vote totals over 1.35 of the city's total democratic primary vote.

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Let's walk through the confusing numbers out there and how I reached the numbers above.
"Jews outside Manhattan could constitute one-sixth of primary voters, according to demographers, and of that group, maybe 30 percent are from the fast-growing Orthodox population, mostly in Brooklyn," according to the NYT.

Jacob Kornbluh recently wrote that the Jewish vote "makes up 25% of the electorate, according to political consultant Jerry Skurnik from Prime New York." Okay, this doesn't really contradict the Times, since this doesn't exclude Manhattan...

Yet, in the same piece, Kornbluh cites a Marist poll in which Jews only make up 16 percent of the electorate among registered democrats. Yossi Gestetner found that in a recent Siena poll of Democratic primary voters Jews made up only 11 percent of the sample. A fifty percent disparity.

Referencing the Orthodox vote, Joseph Berger - the NY Times' Orthodox Maven - reported that: "Orthodox Jews make up 40 percent of the city’s 1.1 million Jews, according to the latest population survey by the UJA-Federation of New York." I long ago pointed out that Berger is sloppy with his numbers, so I'm not surprised how grossly misleading that figure is. Only in Brooklyn are the Orthodox  41% of the Jewish population, according to that study. In the other boroughs, they are between 9 and 15 percent. My calculation, based on the UJA study, finds that Orthodox are around 26 percent of all Jews in the city. Still, Mr. Berger's fictitious figure was recycled freely in the blog-sphere, and I haven't seen anyone pointing out such an obvious mistake.

Given the various numbers, I set out to try to quantify the expected Orthodox vote by my own, and I freely share the here the data for scrutiny and would be delighted if someone perfects the methodology. 

I used two sets of data: The list compiled by Jerry Skurnik of Prime NY - forwarded by a source - of voters who participated in at least one democratic primary during 2009-2012 with a Jewish or Eastern European surname. The list is breaking down these voters by zip codes; to fish out the approximate number of Orthodox voters, I used the UJA study Jewish Community Study's findings on the size of the Orthodox in various neighborhoods. I tried to figure out their turnout and their percentage of overall the Jewish Democratic Jewish electorate. 

651,458 New Yorkers participated in a democratic primary during the four year period, as per Mr. Skurnik, and 21.22 percent of them, 138,227 voters, had a Jewish or Eastern European surname indicating that they are Jewish.

(Note: this analysis omits names that may or may not be Jewish, like Green. I once found that in areas with heavy Jewish concentrations it may under-count the Jewish vote by up to twenty percent. This explains Mr. Kornbluh's report that Mr. Skurnik puts the percentage of Jewish vote at 25 percent. Still, I have no way to quantify it, so I'm sticking with the lower clearly established number. But keep in mind that it may be 15-20 percent higher, thus the Orthodox vote may also be similarly higher.)

This pegs the Jewish democratic primary turnout by 11.15 percent versus their total population (note: this is different than usual turnout figured, broken down versus eligible or registered voters. This looks on the total population); NYC's overall turnout versus it's population was 7.98 percent. When excluding the Jewish vote and the Jewish population, the remaining turnout falls to 7.40 percent. In sum, the Jewish turnout is fifty percent higher. 

Citywide, Orthodox make up 26.28 percent of the Jewish community. Assuming they make up the same percentage of the Jewish electorate, that would amount to 36,326 primary votes - 5.58% of the total primary vote.

Several factors may alter the Orthodox share of the Jewish vote versus their percentage of the Jewish population. For example: A far larger percentage of the Orthodox are younger, below the voting age, than other Jewish denominations: Orthodox generally lean more to the conservative ideology, so maybe they participate less in democratic primaries; On the flip side, Orthodox are believed to be more politically organized and engaged. All in all, can we estimate the Orthodox share of the Jewish democratic vote to be equal to their percentile within the Jewish community?

To answer that, I tried another measure, breaking down the Jewish vote for each borough, and then to each community, using the same Zip Code and neighborhood groupings as the UJA Jewish census. I apportioned each area's vote, according to its own Orthodox percentiles. The breaking up to boroughs, decreased the Orthodox vote by approximately 10 percent, to 33,186 votes (5.09 percent of total democratic vote), and breaking it down to specific neighborhoods, further shrank the Orthodox vote to 31,716, or 4.86 of the general vote.

I think that based on that (especially when we include the 15-20 percent wiggle room that we have with non-identifiable Jewish names) it is safe to assume that the Orthodox democratic primary vote that is up for grabs is over 30,000, and it is about five percent of the total electorate. That isn't to say that this will amount the total number and percentage of Orthodox votes come September. It all depends on the Orthodox turnout versus the general turnout (widely expected to be around 600,000, far lower than the last open mayoral race, when it was over 785,000). So far, it doesn't look like that the Orthodox turnout will be at it maximum, but it may be too early too tell. 

For a breakdown of the Orthodox turnout in specific communities, and further discussion of this analysis, and methodology, stay tuned for the second part of this analysis that is to be continued here.

For the Study methodology, explaining the spreadsheet, please click here.

Embedded is a PDF of the study (only way I could upload it to Scribd). Should you want it in an excel sheet, click here. 

NYC Orthodox Vote Analysis by Moshe Y Friedman

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