Last update - 21:01 30/10/2008
By Raphael Ahren, Haaretz Service and The Associated Press
American citizens who voted in the U.S. presidential elections via absentee ballots from Israel overwhelmingly favored Sen. John McCain, according to exit polls released Thursday. Seventy-six percent said they voted for the Republican candidate, while only 24 percent voted for the Democrat Barack Obama.
The poll was based on data from about 800 voters who attended U.S. election events, one in Tel Aviv and two in Jerusalem, and from among 1,700 citizens who were helped with registering online by VoteFromIsrael.org, the recently-founded non-partisan voter support group who commissioned the poll.
More than two thirds of those polled attended events in Jerusalem; there, 76 voted for McCain and 24 for Obama. Just nine percent of those polled were in Tel Aviv, where votes were split almost evenly: 51 percent voted for the Republican while 49 favored the Democrat.
Seventy percent of those polled defined themselves as either Orthodox or Ultra-Orthodox. Four percent said they were not Jewish. Only 52 percent also posses Israeli citizenship, while almost a third of are students.
Almost 60 percent said that "foreign policy including Israel" was the most important factor that influenced their decision; only nine percent said that the war in Iraq was the most important factor.
The polls, which were conducted by the Jerusalem-based research firm Keevon, starkly contrast polls among voters in the United States, which give the Illinois senator a comfortable lead. Experts estimate that of the more than 200,000 American citizens living in Israel, about 45,000 requested absentee ballots.
An estimated 40,000 Americans living in Israel are expected to vote, and pollster Mitchell Barak says he believes his survey is a good indicator on how they will choose.
He says most American immigrants to Israel are observant Jews who tend to have conservative social views and hawkish attitudes toward the Mideast peace process.
But an American voter who attended one of the gatherings at which the voting took place cast doubts on the accuracy of the representation.
"It's not that all Americans in Israel are McCain supporters, just those that were at the event," she said. "The party was organized by McCain supporters, who brought their families and friends. Most of the Obama voters I know already sent in their ballot by mail and weren't at the party."
Meanwile, McCain again blasted the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday for not releasing a video purportedly showing his rival at an event at which he spoke of his friendship with a controversial Palestinian scholar.
McCain told CNN's veteran interviewer Larry King that he had "never seen anything like" the suppression of the video by the newspaper.
The footage is said to be of a 2003 banquet during which Obama, who was then an Illinois state senator, spoke of his relationship with Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American Orientalist who is known for his frequent criticism of Israel, the L.A. Times said.
In April, the L.A. Times ran a story on the banquet, which was a gathering of Arab Americans and local Chicago politicians who had gathered to bid farewell to Khalidi.
The newspaper has refused to release the video, citing an agreement it made with the video's anonymous source.
But McCain also has ties to Khalidi, which have not been mentioned in his and running mate Sarah Palin's latest drive to draw Jewish voters from the Obama camp. The Center for Palestine Research and Studies - which Khalidi co-founded - has received some $450,000 from the International Republican Institute, an organization chaired by John McCain.