The 2017 American Jewish Committee (AJC) Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion utilized a landline and cellphone survey to measure the opinions of 1,000 Jewish Americans, with the opinions of Jewish Americans about President Trump one of the major topics covered in the study. In addition, opinion questions about anti-Semitism, global issues and Israel were also included in the 2017 study, as they were in previous AJC polls.

1,000 completed Survey interviews were conducted by SSRS for AJC between August 10 and August 28, 2017.

Available for downloading are the AJC press release summarizing the survey results, a summary of responses to the survey questions on a question-by-question basis, and a detailed explanation of the research methodology.  

Overall Jewish Assessment of President Trump

The AJC press release noted that the survey shows that 77% of American Jews surveyed indicated that they had an unfavorable opinion of President Trump.  In short, "AJC’s Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion indicates widespread dissatisfaction with President Trump’s performance in office..."

Asked whom they had voted for in the 2016 presidential election, 64% replied Hillary Clinton and 18% Donald Trump. "It is clear that relatively few minds have changed since Election Day."

Attitudes by Denomination:

There is a marked division of views between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews on President Trump’s performance. Those who identify as Orthodox were the most supportive of Trump on Election Day and continue to give him high marks. Fifty-four percent  (54%) of the Orthodox say they voted for Trump, compared to 24% of Conservative, 10% of Reform, 8% of Reconstructionist, and 14% of respondents who identify themselves as “Just Jewish.”

On President Trump’s performance to date, 71% of Orthodox respondents, 25% of Conservative, 11% of Reform, 8% of Reconstructionist, and 17% of Just Jewish view it favorably, while 27% of Orthodox, 73% of Conservative, 88% of Reform, 92% of Reconstructionist, and 81% of Just Jewish view his performance unfavorably.

Anti-Semitism Perceptions Increase.

The 2017 survey recorded a significant jump in the number of those who view anti-Semitism as a problem in America. While in 2016, 73% considered it a problem and only 21% viewed it as “very serious,” in 2017 84% say it is a problem, and 41% consider it a “very serious” problem. Similarly, the percentage considering anti-Semitism on the college campus a problem rose from 56% in 2016 to 69% this year, and the number believing it to be a “very serious” problem went from 23% to 29%."

Focusing on anti-Semitism in Europe, 54% consider it a very serious problem and 32% somewhat of a problem, while 8 percent do not see it as a problem. 

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The 2017 surveyed also asked about which country posed the greatest danger to America [North Korea], the U.S. role in the Israel-Palestine peace process, whether the American Embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the degree of importance respondents place upon being Jewish, and respondent assessment of Jewish religious pluralism in Israel.

1,000 Jewish American adults interviewed from August 10-28, 2017 by telephone - - 492 by landline and 508 via cell phones.

SSRS reports an error rate of +/- 3.71%, including design effect error related to weighting and post-stratification (as described in the methodology report).  The survey response rate was 39.3% overall: 42.7% in the landline frame and 36.0% in the cell phone frame. 

Methodology describes survey data weighting and post-stratification in detail.  Table 1 describes the impact of weighting the completed interviews by comparing the unweighted data and the weighted data on key demographic variables.  Table 2 summarizes the survey's MOE, while Table 3 summarizes sample disposition results for the cell phone, landline and combined sample

DATA FILE for the survey has graciously been made available by AJC and SSRS for DataBank users within days after the public release of the AJC 2017 reports.  These data files have been of great interest and utility for researchers interested in surveys of American Jews.  The DataBank staff thank AJC and SSRS for allowing us to post the data quickly.

SPSS SAV version  -  SPSS data file in SAV format has 1,000 respondents and 55 variables.

• Data file is NOT weighted as default.

•  Weight is variable 55, Final_weight

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SPSS POR version is available for users without access to SPSS, who have another data analysis system which imports "por" files.  Same number of variables and cases.  Some variable names may have been truncated in the SAV to POR conversion