Poll: The more religious the Jewish voter, the more pro-McCain

For those who like to entertain themselves with questions of religion and politics, this new Gallup analysis is a blast. Although the bottom line is quite obvious - the more religious the voter the more likely he is to support McCain over Obama - some of the details are still interesting.

1.

As we've seen last week, religion is not very important to American Jews. But for those still saying it is important, the political implications are clear:

Just 39 percent of U.S. Jews report that religion is important in their daily lives, well below the overall national average. Among this smaller group of religious Jews, however, Obama and McCain break even, 45 percent to 45 percent. This compares to Obama's 68 percent to 26 percent lead among the majority of Jews for whom religion is not important.

2.

By the way, Pew reported that religion is "very important" to 31 percent of Jews, and "somewhat important" to 41 percent. This might mean that eight percent of the "somewhat" group will shift to the "important" group if only two options are available. The rest of the somewhat" group will move to the "not important" group if the "somewhat" option is not available. One has to be careful with such conclusions, as these are two different polls with two different methods.

3.

According to the Pew study, only 17 percent of Jews are Republicans. Only 21 percent are conservatives. But according to the new Gallup study, even among the "religion is not important" group 26 percent will vote for McCain.

In a previous Gallup study it was revealed that 32 percent of Jews intend to vote for McCain. From the new Gallup study one can learn that this hasn't changed much: McCain will get between 30 to 40 percent of Jewish voters.

Is that enough? Read here.

4.

For some reason, the Orthodox Union has decided that what the new Gallup poll means is that the Orthodox are split by half. I don't see it. One might convincingly argue that most Orthodox Jews will agree with the notion that religion is important to their lives, but this does not mean that most Jews who find religion to be important are Orthodox. In fact, 39 percent of Jews say religion is important to them, but as we all know, the percentage of Orthodox Jews is around 15 percent of all Jews.

This probably means that Orthodox Jews support McCain in even greater numbers than the 50-50 predicted for "religion is important" Jews. If the larger group also includes more liberal Jews - including conservative and reform Jews who feel religion is important to them - it?s likely that these Jews will be more prone to support Obama, though probably still less so than other Jews. Thus, to reach the total of 50-50 you'll need more than half of the Orthodox to support McCain.