(In)stability in American public attitudes toward Jews: a panel analysis

Polls for the past several decades indicate high regard for Jews in democracies in WesternEurope and North American. We however have a limited understanding of the propertiesunderlying those poll responses, for instance whether response bias or nonattitudesaccount for those results. The nonattitudes perspective suggests that respondents'surveyanswers to questions about Jews are not true attitudes. Nonattitudes are weakly heldresponses to survey questions, and tend to be unstable over time, reflecting random asopposed to systematic change. This paper uses panel data from Voter Study Group surveysto test for individual-level stability in attitudes toward Jews by non-Jews in the UnitedStates in the 2010s to assess whether such attitudes are true or nonattitudes. Resultssuggest considerable instability especially when compared to attitudes toward Muslims,Democrats, and Republicans, suggesting a high degree of nonattitudes in non-Jews atti-tudes toward Jews. The conclusion offers reasons that might account for this instabilityin attitudes toward Jews and implications for the continuation of positive regard forJews in western democracies.