The most Jewish Congressional Districts in the Union

[Statistikhengst]

Though this does not directly have to do with elections, it does indirectly and I think it's worth a look.

As far as I know, this is the first time that this kind of data has been presented quite this well.

Jewish Maps of the United States by Congressional District | Berman Jewish DataBank

There is a good summary at the site, plus a number of downloads.

Here is how the data looks on an electoral map of the USA:

Now, here is a pretty good encapsulation of this all at KOS. Yes, KOS is a left-wing site, but the elections part of the site is very, very good at data:

Daily Kos: What's the most Jewish congressional district in America?

The actual number of Jews in America is a remarkably difficult question to answer, but Comenetz's numbers are almost identical to a recent Pew study which puts the total Jewish population at 6.7 million, or about 2.2 percent.

Jews are spread very unevenly throughout the country, though. Half of all American Jews live in just 37 congressional districts (out of 435), and 93 CDs contain three-fourths of all Jews. Just 13 districts are home to 100,000 or more Jews: nine in New York and two apiece in California and Florida.

The most Jewish district, you probably won't be surprised to learn, is Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler's NY-10, which, thanks to its inclusion of Manhattan's Upper West Side and Brooklyn's Borough Park, two heavily Jewish neighborhoods, is 27.5 percent Jewish. The least, at 0.0004 percent (and perhaps with no Jews at all, given the margin of error inherent in such measurements), is rural OK-02, represented by freshman GOP Rep. Markwayne Mullin.

And if you're anything like the Daily Kos Elections crew, the first question upon seeing this data would be, "Which is the district with the least Jewish population that's represented by a congressperson who identifies as Jewish?" Answer: VA-07, the only district in the nation held by a Jewish Republican (Eric Cantor), at 0.27 percent Jewish. That's followed by TN-09 (Steve Cohen) and KY-03 (John Yarmuth), each of which are also less than 1 percent Jewish. (Cohen's district actually had much of its Jewish citizenry moved to a neighboring district during redistricting.)

How about the most-Jewish district represented by a non-Jew? Unsurprisingly, the top five in that category are all located in New York City, topped by NY-09 at 23.41 percent (thanks in large part to the inclusion of Crown Heights), represented by Yvette Clark, who identifies as Methodist. It also includes NY-08 (Hakeem Jeffries), NY-12 (Carolyn Maloney), NY-11 (Michael Grimm), and NY-06 (Grace Meng).

Comenetz has much more data available if you'd like to drill down further, including Excel spreadsheets and GIS files. And that full Pew report also has tons more demographic information on U.S. Jewry as well.

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I think it really is a tribute to how we are growing as a people when non-Jews are being elected in Jewish heavy districts and Jews are being elected in heavily non-Jewish districts. Especially impressive to me is Eric Cantor (R), who has done very, very well in a very competitive district. In Tennessee, in an extremely black-heavy district, Steve Cohen (D) has done well for years. Occasionally, a black candidate has waged a bigoted campaign against Cohen, but he is so well liked within his community that huge majorities of black voters came out to support him.


Notice also that people who are not Jewish elected in very heavily Jewish CDs are pretty evenly split between the two major parties.

Now, this is not the only data that I find interesting.

I would love to see exactly this same kind of data for Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians, perhaps with a sub-break-down for Evangelical Christians, who tend to be very active politically. Also data for the Muslim population of the USA could also be interesting to see. And it would also be interesting to see such data for athiests, but I don't even know if such data is being collected, or collected consistently.

If anyone knows of sources for such data, I would love to see it.

I want to make it very clear - no partisan point is being made here. This is just plain old cool data, worth a look at least.


Oh, and some interesting graphics from the past, just for enjoyment:

Source:

Jewish Voting Record in U.S. Presidential Elections | Jewish Virtual Library

Of these 100 years, the three Republican candidate to have done the best in the Jewish vote:

Charles Edward Hughes (R) - 1916 (45%)
Warren Gamaliel Harding (R) - 1920 (43%) - Harding is the only Republican president to have won the Jewish vote.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) - 1956 (40%)


The three Republican candidates to have done the worst in the Jewish vote in the last 100 years:

Wendell Willkie (R) - 1940 (10%)
Thomas Dewey (R) - 1944 AND 1948 (10%)
Goldwater (R) - 1964 (10%)


The three Democratic candidate to have done the best in the Jewish vote:

FDR (D) - 1940 AND 1944 (90%)
Johnson (D) - 1964 (90%)
FDR (D) - 1936 (85%)


The three Democratic candidates to have done the worst in the Jewish vote:

James Cox (D) - 1920 (19%) - the only Democrat to lose the Jewish vote.
Jimmy Carter (D) - 1980 (45%)
John Davis (D) - 1924 (51%)


The narrowest margin D-R in the Jewish vote: 1980

Carter 45 / Reagan 39 / Anderson 16 - margin: Carter +6

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[Statistikhengst]

*bump*

 

[editec]

Hmmm..all the best urban places in the USA to live.

Not shocked at all.

Realized ( like when I was about 55 or so) that nearly half my friends during my entire lifetime (girlfriends included) were secular Jews.

Really no idea how or why that happened.

Bear in mind that I am not a fan of Israel, I basically loathe all THREE formal Abrahamic religions, too.

the ECONOMIST offered an interesting article about what does it mean to even BE a Jew, this month.

Apparently even Jews cannot agree (que surprise!)

 

[Statistikhengst]

Hmmm..all the best urban places in the USA to live.

Not shocked at all.

Realized ( like when I was about 55 or so) that nearly half my friends during my entire lifetime (girlfriends included) were secular Jews.

Really no idea how or why that happened.

Bear in mind that I am not a fan of Israel, I basically loathe all THREE formal Abrahamic religions, too.

the ECONOMIST offered an interesting article about what does it mean to even BE a Jew, this month.

Apparently even Jews cannot agree (que surprise!)

Of course we don't agree with each other, debating is an integral part of the Jewish experience!!!