rebfalk

Living in a small town in a desert state park. Worried about my country & world. Retired, volunteer. Have worked on water issues & town planning group.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@Ange_Amene Labels keep changing, but liberal and progressive aren't the same as I understand it. I don't believe liberals oppose Hakeem Jeffries. It's a segment of the more extreme left that seems to be doing it.

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

Why they NEED it to be a genocide.

From a live event at Valley Beth Shalom Synagogue, Encino, California. With Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz and Reverend Drew Sams, Senior Pastor of Bel Air Church.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@PollTracker2024 Not seeking retribution?

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@scarylawyerguy Starting to feel like this is a deliberate strategy to weaken the Dem party.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@marciesilvers1 Read this long post and you'll understand that that statistic is unlikely to be true:

[SGM @sgmlabs]

In my former life I was a Statistician and a Silicon Valley based Data Scientist, so let me answer definitively that the whole premise that Jews voted for Democrats (and the first Openly Muslim senator) is nothing but the latest trope...

What the polls actually show about Jewish voters in 2026 (and what they don't):

The national number everyone is repeating
Since election night, I've seen the same statistic pop up everywhere: Jewish voters went roughly 67% Democratic this cycle. It shows up in NBC's exit poll coverage, in advocacy group press releases, in casual conversation as settled fact.

I spent a few hours this week tracing where that number actually comes from, and I want to walk through what I found, because the real picture is a lot THINNER than "multiple polls confirm it" suggests.

Start with the "EXIT POLL" framing itself. When NBC, CBS, CNN, AP, and Fox each report a Jewish voter breakdown this cycle, it looks like 5 separate confirmations of the same fact. It isn't.

All 5 outlets are publishing numbers from a single shared vendor, SSRS, running one (that's right, ONE) survey called the Voter Poll on behalf of the entire consortium. Six network bylines on the same spreadsheet is not five independent checks on a finding. It's one measurement with six press releases attached to it, all branded under their individual media names.

The advocacy-side polls have the same problem in miniature. The Jewish Voters Resource Center's poll and the Jewish Electorate Institute's poll both get cited as separate corroborating evidence. Both were fielded by the same polling firm, GBAO Strategies.

Two sponsor logos, two press releases, one survey house running both instruments.

When I actually counted the genuinely independent measurement operations behind the "five polls all agree" claim, I got 2 (3 tops), not five.

This matters more than it sounds like, because polarized elections have a documented history of this exact failure mode.

In 2004, the national exit polls significantly overstated John Kerry's support, and the pollster's own post-election review traced a large chunk of the error to Republican voters that year being less willing to stop and talk to an exit poll interviewer than Democratic voters were.

A bigger sample would not have fixed that problem. Only a different design would have.

The same mechanism applies here: a poll asking Jewish voters about their choice in an unusually bitter, identity-charged race is exactly the kind of survey where willingness to answer at all might correlate with the answer itself - i.e. republican-voting Jews never self-identify, etc.

But above is just skimming the surface. Now, for the real Statistics. As the famous saying goes: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" - turns out, very applicable here 👇

[SGM @sgmlabs]

To sum up, don't trust any of the reporting.

I'm not arguing either outcome is wrong. With Jews or without Jews, the actual outcome would likely be the same.

But the evidence being waved around to prove this centuries-old trope that Jews always vote socialists / etc is much weaker than the confident way it gets repeated.

Note that above argument was built without assumption of any wrongdoing.

Couple any of the above - like a random 1% mistaken identification - with actual desire for wrongdoing, and the results on any narrative are catastrophic. You can basically start to tell whatever story you want about Jews.

Regardless, the pattern in both cases is the same: a small group gets measured either by casting a wide net over the general population and asking people to self-identify into the group, or by building a targeted list of people assumed to belong to the group and confirming it when contacted.

Neither failure mode is fixed by a bigger sample or a tighter stated margin of error. Both require knowing exactly how the data was collected, and in nearly every case examined here, that information simply isn't published.

Don't believe every headline you read...

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@bensolis1 This person seems to understand the kind of data you post about: https://t.co/hi7FPRNkpk

[SGM @sgmlabs]

In my former life I was a Statistician and a Silicon Valley based Data Scientist, so let me answer definitively that the whole premise that Jews voted for Democrats (and the first Openly Muslim senator) is nothing but the latest trope...

What the polls actually show about Jewish voters in 2026 (and what they don't):

The national number everyone is repeating
Since election night, I've seen the same statistic pop up everywhere: Jewish voters went roughly 67% Democratic this cycle. It shows up in NBC's exit poll coverage, in advocacy group press releases, in casual conversation as settled fact.

I spent a few hours this week tracing where that number actually comes from, and I want to walk through what I found, because the real picture is a lot THINNER than "multiple polls confirm it" suggests.

Start with the "EXIT POLL" framing itself. When NBC, CBS, CNN, AP, and Fox each report a Jewish voter breakdown this cycle, it looks like 5 separate confirmations of the same fact. It isn't.

All 5 outlets are publishing numbers from a single shared vendor, SSRS, running one (that's right, ONE) survey called the Voter Poll on behalf of the entire consortium. Six network bylines on the same spreadsheet is not five independent checks on a finding. It's one measurement with six press releases attached to it, all branded under their individual media names.

The advocacy-side polls have the same problem in miniature. The Jewish Voters Resource Center's poll and the Jewish Electorate Institute's poll both get cited as separate corroborating evidence. Both were fielded by the same polling firm, GBAO Strategies.

Two sponsor logos, two press releases, one survey house running both instruments.

When I actually counted the genuinely independent measurement operations behind the "five polls all agree" claim, I got 2 (3 tops), not five.

This matters more than it sounds like, because polarized elections have a documented history of this exact failure mode.

In 2004, the national exit polls significantly overstated John Kerry's support, and the pollster's own post-election review traced a large chunk of the error to Republican voters that year being less willing to stop and talk to an exit poll interviewer than Democratic voters were.

A bigger sample would not have fixed that problem. Only a different design would have.

The same mechanism applies here: a poll asking Jewish voters about their choice in an unusually bitter, identity-charged race is exactly the kind of survey where willingness to answer at all might correlate with the answer itself - i.e. republican-voting Jews never self-identify, etc.

But above is just skimming the surface. Now, for the real Statistics. As the famous saying goes: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" - turns out, very applicable here 👇

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@bensolis1 @jstreetdotorg Wasn't this a very small sample of exit voters? I'm not knowledgeable about exit polls but read this. Also, voting for a Democratic Senate majority doesn't mean people don't feel worried and unsettled about the vote. And this has affected Jewish voters outside MI as well.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@composter108 @JoshKraushaar I believe Marni is reasonable on Israel. That can get you called being a moderate.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@Claire_V0ltaire I don't vote in MI but I empathize with the difficuly of wanting to check Trump & get D control of Congress & yet cringing at rising antisemitism that calls itself antizionism & wanting to check that. Haley Stevens played this out publicly & the dilemma remains.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@aravosis @magi_jay @usurpthachef Pundits have to have something to say.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@ellad3vi Who the f cares? Why post this?

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@SireRottweiler Didn't E-S's supporters shut down her campaign rallies during the primary?

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@Shellil9j @reedgalen Not sure how that is the case. She seems to have gone through a difficult process that had been building for some time. If she believed that E-S was a danger in the end, that isn't a self serving realization.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@isaiahrmartin Depends on how many Democrats you want to lose.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@RoguePOTUSStaff Bad look but the rules provide for this.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@investor_chick @Acyn @HillaryClinton Petty

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@reedgalen There is going to be a backlash against the way Dems are treating Haley Stevens. You are hurting the party with this self righteous BS.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@Shellil9j @reedgalen She actually represented people who she didn't want shut out.

[rebfalk @fallrey]

@DougHeye Optics are not good for doing this unless there is a true security risk. She didn't become a Republican and she has voted faithfully with Dems. Bad look for a supposed big tent.