Bad (Election) Year for the Jews
Jews had a bad year in terms of winning seats in Congress, falling from 39 members in both chambers in the 112th Congress to only 32 in the next one.
We pretty much predicted this outcome. But with the breakdown of the new Congress by religion, which was carried out by the Pew Forum it becomes clear that Jews fared worse than any other faith group in the 2012 elections.
“The biggest decline is among Jews,” the research states, falling from 7% of Congress before the elections to 6% in the upcoming Congress which will be sworn-in in January.
Catholics stand out as the religious groups making the greatest gains, with 161 members in the 113th Congress, compared to 156 in the 112th, a trend that may be linked to the increased clout of Latino voters.
#_ftnref2
Catholics and Jews are all over-represented in Congress compared to their share in the population. This is especially true for Jews, who hold 6% of the House and Senate seats while only having a 2% share of the American population, Episcopalians who are also only 2% of the population and make up 7.2% of Congress and Presbyterians (8.1% of Congress and 3% of population.) Pentecostals, on the other hand, are under-represented and there are no members of Congress that are Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The 2012 election did bring, however, more religious diversity to Capitol Hill, with the first ever Hindu (Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard,) and the first Buddhist in Senate (Mazie Hirono, also from Hawaii).
According to Pew, there’s also first-ever member of Congress to describe her religion as “none.” That would be Arizona Democrat Krysten Sinema, an aethiest, who is also the first openly bisexual representative. In a completing-the-circle twist, Sinema beat two Jewish candidates in a Democratic primary to get a shot at the seat.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO