In wild overestimate, Americans think 30% of the country is Jewish
People attend a concert at B’nai Jeshurun synagogue on the upper west side on March 06, 2022 in New York City. Photo by Getty Images
By Arno Rosenfeld March 16, 2022
Americans significantly overestimate the number of Jews living in the country, according to a survey released Tuesday. Respondents guessed on average that 30% of the U.S. population is Jewish — a sum 15 times the actual proportion.
Past surveys have revealed that people overestimate the number of Jews living in their country and around the world. An Anti-Defamation League survey in 2015 found that 18% of people worldwide believed Jews made up at least 10% of the global population — the true figure is about 0.2% — but 16% correctly stated that Jews made up less than 1% of world’s population and another 14% believed they represented a modest 1-2%.
The overestimations are not unique to Jews — people tend to believe most minority groups are much larger and that majorities are smaller than they actually are. YouGov found that the overestimates were unlikely to be based on fear or animosity toward minorities, noting that members of minority groups often overestimated their own share of the population. Black Americans, for example, estimated on average that they made up 52% of the adult population, compared to the actual 12%, and first-generation immigrants guessed on average that 40% of Americans were also recent immigrants, compared to the actual 14%.
“We find that the tendency to misestimate the size of demographic groups is actually one instance of a broader tendency to overestimate small proportions and underestimate large ones, regardless of the topic,” Taylor Orth, a senior survey data writer for YouGov said in an article discussing the findings.
Get the Forward delivered to your inbox. Sign up here to receive our essential morning briefing of American Jewish news and conversation, the afternoon’s top headlines and best reads, and a weekly letter from our editor-in-chief.
YouGov, a market research firm that specializes in online surveys, polled a representative sample of 1,000 U.S. adults for the survey, though it did not share a margin of error. Respondents were asked, “If you had to guess, what percentage of American adults…” for a wide range of questions. When taken as a whole, the estimates prove incompatible with one another. Americans estimated on average that 27% of the country is Muslim, 30% is Jewish and 58% Catholic — 115% in total, and leaving no room for other religious groups.
They also guessed that 21% of the country is transgender (actual proportion: 1%), 26% has a household income over $500,000 (actual: 1%) and that 30% of the country lives in New York City (actual: 3%), among a host of other incorrect assumptions.
Unlike the ADL survey, YouGov provided no breakdown of its findings, sharing only the average of individuals’ responses.
The ADL also provided a slightly more concrete premise to its question, asking “out of every one hundred people in the world, how many do you think are Jewish?” With a similar question they asked people to estimate how many Jews lived in their own country, which found people making far more accurate estimates — 44% of people said their nation was less than 2% Jewish, while only 8% believed the share was over 10%.
There are 15.2 million Jews in the world, according to a study released by the Jewish Agency for Israel in September. The agency says 6 million of those Jews live in the United States, though the Pew Research Center](https://forward.com/news/469350/pew-american-jews-study-divide-antisemitism-jews-of-color-intermarriage/) puts the number at 7.5 million, counting all those who identify as Jewish either by religion or ethnicity.
Both counts put the population under 2.5% of the nation’s 332 million residents.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
