Unlike the Rest of the World, Israelis Overwhelmingly Favor Romney

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Remember the BBC poll last week which showed that internationally President Barack Obama is overwhelmingly more popular than Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney? In every country polled besides Pakistan, Obama got huge approval ratings, pulling in more than 60 percent in Canada, Australia and the UK, and even 72 percent from the French.

Turns out, there’s one country defying that trend in a very big way.

A new poll shows that Israeli Jews overwhelmingly favor Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney over President Barack Obama. The “Peace Index” poll from the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University shows that 57 percent of Israeli Jews prefer Romney over Obama, who receives 22 percent support, a difference in popularity of almost three to one.

This means that the political outlook of Israeli Jews is trending in the opposite direction of American Jewish voting patterns as shown in the latest poll from the American Jewish news site the Algemeiner, which has been tracking American Jews’ political preferences almost every day leading up to the elections. Its latest IDB/TIPP tracking poll published Thursday shows Obama at 69.3 percent among American Jewish voters with Romney at 29.7 percent.

This is consistent with other polls of likely Jewish voters, including the latest from the American Jewish Committee which found 65 percent of American Jews nationwide plan to vote for Obama, 24 percent for Mitt Romney, and 10 percent undecided. The only exception is among Orthodox Jews who favor Romney.

The Israeli Peace Index poll was conducted between October 22 and 24 and included 601 respondents. The margin of error is 4.5 percent.

Besides finding favor from conservative Israelis, Romney also sees support from those who define themselves as middle-of-the-road, 54 percent of whom say they prefer to see him in the White House. Interestingly, even 30 percent of left-wing Israelis say they support Romney over Obama.

By contrast, 45 percent of Israeli Arabs say they favor Obama, while 15 percent like Romney.

The Jerusalem Post reports the question the poll asked was: "In terms of Israeli interests, who would be preferable to win the elections next month in the U.S.”

It also reports that “a similar Peace Index poll in July found that Israelis felt that Romney ‘assigned more importance to defending Israel's national interest’ than Obama by a 2:1 ratio: 40% for Romney to 19% for Obama.”

(H/T: Jerusalem Post)