While the controversial Proposition 209 scored a decisive victory statewide, Jewish voters nonetheless firmly rejected the measure that would end most affirmative action programs in California, according to an informal survey.
Seventy-four percent of Jewish voters surveyed here and in Southern California opposed the California Civil Rights Initiative, according to an exit poll of Jewish voters conducted by the American Jewish Congress on Election Day. Twenty percent supported it and 7 percent were undecided.
Though deflated that the measure passed, Tracy Salkowitz, executive director of the regional AJCongress, said she was “delighted” with the fact that so many Jews voted to oppose it.
“Over the past few months, I started to see a change in Jewish voters as they became more educated [about 209],” said Salkowitz, whose organization has worked for more than a year to defeat the measure. Salkowitz expects to see a legal challenge to 209, and says her organization may join that effort by filing a friend-of-the-court brief.
The primary points that swayed Jewish voters to the no-on-209 camp, Salkowitz said, were that “209 is too extreme and that while Jews strongly believe in a merit-based system, some modification was more appropriate than throwing the entire system out.”
The AJCongress survey is part of a national AJCongress effort to track the Jewish vote. The organization has conducted polls in every presidential election since 1980, weighing in not only on candidates, but also on key issues such as health care, prayer in public schools and black-Jewish relations.
Here in the Bay Area, AJCongress representatives headed out early with their clipboards and pencils, surveying 75 Jewish voters at polling places in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Mateo. A similar number of voters was surveyed in Southern California.
Salkowitz stressed that the AJCongress voter survey is unscientific. Nonetheless, she believes that even though the number of respondents is small, results reflect voter trends.
“What this kind of thing does is show patterns,” she said. “I think when the final results are in and the scientific studies are done, what they will show will be the same results but not the same numbers.”
Reflecting previous studies that have shown that a great majority of Bay Area Jews are Democrats, 76 percent of those voters surveyed here called themselves Democrats, 10 percent independent and 3 percent Republican. The party affiliation of Southern California respondents was not available at press time.
Nonetheless, it appears that Jewish voters surveyed at both ends of the state concur on certain key issues.
Approximately 84 percent of Jewish voters in Northern and Southern California agreed with the statement that “children of illegal immigrants should be allowed to attend public schools.”
In addition, almost 93 percent of those surveyed statewide agreed that the federal government should guarantee welfare for poverty-stricken children.
A majority also supported the successful Proposition 215, which approves the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.
Nationwide, the AJCongress polled 2,112 voters at more than 90 key precincts in 10 states including New York, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas and Pennsylvania, as well as the District of Columbia.
The survey showed that 83 percent of Jews cast their ballots for the Bill Clinton-Al Gore ticket, while 13 percent voted for Republicans Bob Dole and Jack Kemp and 4 percent voted for other candidates, including Ross Perot. In 1992, Jewish voters preferred the Clinton-Gore ticket over the Bush-Quayle ticket by a ratio of more than 6-to-1.
“Given the relative affluence of American Jewry, the motivation of the Jewish voter plainly is not primarily economic self-concern,” said Phil Baum, AJCongress executive director.
“Rather it seems to be a kind of nostalgic family loyalty to the interests of the working class, along with the belief that it is the primary obligation of government to intervene and protect the disadvantaged.”
In assessing the impact of the Jewish vote, AJCongress analysts say solid Jewish support in key states was among the factors that helped make Clinton the first Democrat elected to a second term in more than 50 years.
“The Jewish vote can tip the balance in a number of states,” said Martin Hochbaum, director of the poll and of the AJCongress Commission on National Affairs.
“The states in which Jews live in the greatest numbers have the greatest clout in the Electoral College.”