Yesterday I posted about the results of two separate surveys conducted in Britain: both commissioned separately by the relatively new group The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). One survey was a professionally run YouGov survey directed at 3,411 non-Jewish, British adults (a very large sample for this kind of survey by the way). The other was an attempt to survey British Jews directly (and this is much harder because there just aren’t reliable polling samples that can do this). This meant that the CAA themselves polled 2,230 British Jewish people, equivalent to almost 1% of the Jewish population of Great Britain. That is a very large sample to poll, however, but it’s true to say the methodology is not as solid as YouGov’s work.
Looking at the CAA, lets put aside the fact I hate the term antisemitism (even though it is better than the hyphenated version which they’re not using). They were formed over the summer because the long established representatives of British Jewry were not doing enough (in their opinion) to combat the growing hate against Jews. They saw this rise up during the fighting in Gaza over the summer.
So these people are not well liked by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. As expected, the official organ of British Jewry, the Jewish Chronicle, has a very snide and dismissive article about the surveys and they’ve conducted their own survey of British Jews. Again, methodology to survey British Jews is flaky and if you throw in the question bias, you can really slant things.
JC poll reveals 88 per cent of British Jews have not considered leaving UK
The vast majority of Britain’s Jews have no intention of packing their bags despite rising concern about safety after the Paris attacks, according to an authoritative new poll for the JC.
Almost nine out of 10 – 88 per cent – say that they have not considered quitting the UK since last week’s atrocities, compared to just 11 per cent who have thought of leaving.
Among 18-34 year olds, however, the percentage of those who say they have considered leaving jumps to over 17 per cent.
But here is the exact question and the results from the JC poll:
Have last week’s events in Paris made you consider leaving Britain?
Yes I have considered leaving 11%
No I have not considered leaving 88%
Don’t know 1%
Notice how they throw in a qualifier “last week’s events in Paris” to narrow down the answers? Well the corresponding data (but remember, very different samples, completely different questions) from the CAA poll:
“In the past two years I have considered leaving Britain due to antisemitism”
25% agree (9% strongly agree)
63% disagree
31% of Jewish people in the North of England agree
So we’re talking about a difference between “last week’s events in Paris” and thinking back over 2 years. You get the point.
And then, right at the end of the Jewish Chronicle piece they have this gem:
In the largest survey of European Jewry on antisemitism – carried out by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research for the European Union and published last year – 18 per cent of British Jews said they had thought of leaving over the previous five years because of safety concerns (a further one per cent said they had emigrated but returned).
So we’re all arguing over degrees. Somewhere between 15% and 30% of British Jews are seriously thinking of leaving the UK.
Which is why the Jewish Chronicle tries its best to discredit the CAA:
But the reliability of the CAA data has been questioned. Social scientist Dr Keith Kahn-Harris said that it was “methodologically invalid. There can be no confidence in its representativeness”.
And the Jewish Chronicle also largely ignores the much more interesting part of the CAA work (and the part with the more reliable methodology) of the attitudes of non-Jews toward Jews. They gave it only one paragraph and two stats:
In a separate poll conducted by YouGov for the CAA, 45 per cent of British people believed at least of one six negative statements about Jews presented to them. One in five of the 3,400 who were questioned thought that loyalty to Israel made Jews less loyal to Britain than other Britons.
One note here, I asked the CAA specifically about whether they could report the attitudes of British Muslims and they can’t: they told me that conducting a survey of the whole UK population that had a large enough Muslim sample to be representative is very difficult. I do accept that but it’s a major hole in the data.
I’m booked to appear on Josh Hasten’s show on Voice of Israel at 3pm today (that’s 8am on the US East Coast). Tune in live if you can: I’m sure I’ll post the file tomorrow.
