McCain has an edge among U.S. voters in Israel
By Paul Goldman, NBC News Producer
TEL AVIV, Israel – Thousands of Americans living in Israel cast their votes this week for the U.S. elections. With approximately 40,000 Americans in Israel registered to vote, their numbers are small, but significant.
And Shimon Greenspan and Dina Lerner, founders of a private, non-partisan organization called Vote from Israel, were determined to make sure their votes were counted.
Several months ago Greenspan and Lerner, were sitting around with friends talking about the upcoming election and were amazed to find out their friends were not intending to vote. There were many reasons, but they mainly boiled down to that that it was just too difficult.
All the excuses prompted Greenspan and Lerner to create their organization and encourage U.S. residents living here to register and vote. In a period of only a few weeks, their organization has been responsible for registering up to 10,000 U.S. citizens to vote in the November elections.
Poll: Israel would be a red state
And in a poll of 817 Americans who cast their absentee ballots here this week – 76 percent said they voted for Sen. John McCain and 24 percent said they voted for Sen. Barack Obama.
The poll, which was commissioned by the Vote from Israel organization, was conducted by Keevoon, a Jerusalem-based research firm.
Voters answered poll questions regarding the issues they considered most important, as well as which candidate they thought more capable of handling a host of issues.
More than half of the respondents listed foreign policy (including Israel policy) as the most important factor influencing their vote. The potential threat from a nuclear Iran was of concern to these voters. Nearly two-thirds of respondents were "very concerned" by the Iranian threat, with 93 percent agreeing that a nuclear Iran would be a threat to the United States.
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