‎2012 Projection: 23 House Jews, 12 Senate Jews

Look to your right: Can you see the new J-Meter? I’m not going to dwell on it ‎since you can read all about it in the About the J-Meter page – but I urge you to ‎take a look and study these new Rosner’s Domain features, some of which you ‎can’t find anywhere else. Two of the features you can follow on J-Meter are the ‎House and the Senate Jewish projections, in which we will try to give you a ‎better sense of the projected number of Jewish legislators following the next ‎election. I made a habit of counting Jewish legislators quite a long time ago, and ‎am still enjoying this little game of Jewish politics. ‎

So where do we stand at the end of April 2012? ‎

For the detailed analysis and all of the details, you’ll have to go to our J-Meter ‎House Projection page (yes, you can click) and the Senate Projection page ‎‎(click). If you only want only the bottom line, it is this:‎

No record will be reached this time. It was nice to cover, both in 2006 and in ‎‎2008, the two rounds of elections in which a record number of Jewish legislators were ‎sent to Capitol Hill. In the 2010, when the Republican wave hit the House, the ‎number of Jewish legislators went down, as I had been predicting many months ‎in advance. In 2012 it is going to decline even more. ‎

Note: Our count is far from final. The races all around the US are just starting to ‎take shape, and in many places levels of uncertainty still make it hard to get a clear ‎picture. However, we do have an initial projection to make, according to which ‎the caucus of Jewish Congressman and Congresswomen is going to lose four ‎members and include 23 legislators compared to the 27 elected in 2010. ‎

In the Senate, where 13 Jews have been serving over the last two years, we ‎also expect to lose some. Two Jewish senators are departing, and while we expect ‎all Jewish senators who have races this year to retain their seats, we do not ‎believe that the small number of new Jewish contenders will compensate for the ‎departure of the two senators. Thus, we put our projection for April at 12 Jewish senators following the 2012 election (instead of 13 following the 2010 ‎elections).‎

We invite you all to survey our projection. Please, send us your comments, ‎correct our mistakes, tell us things we don’t yet know.