U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Rudy Giuliani come in first and second in approval ratings in a poll of American Jews.
Clinton, the front-runner among Democrats, scored 53 percent in this year’s American Jewish Committee poll. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and a front-runner among Republicans, received a 41 percent favorable rating.
Giuliani was ahead – albeit within the margin of error of 3 percentage points – of two other Democratic front-runners, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who tied at 38 percent.
Such a staunch showing for a Republican is unusual in a community that trends strongly Democratic.
Respondents broke down into 58 percent Democrat, 26 percent independent and 15 percent Republican, diverging from the third-third-third breakdown that is the norm in general population polls. The phone survey of 1,000 Jewish Americans was conducted Nov. 6-25.
