David Bernstein passes on a rather strange (unlinked) finding:
As the 1992 study showed, Americans significantly overestimate the size of the Jewish population in the U.S. About one-in-five (21%) Americans estimate that Jews comprise less than 10% of the U.S. population…. while 43% put the figure somewhere between 10% and 25%. Roughly one-in-four (23%) Americans estimate that Jews make up more than 25% of the total U.S. population. The most anti-Semitic Americans are significantly more inclined than others to overestimate the size of the Jewish population, with 37% estimating that Jews comprise more than a quarter of the total U.S. population.
Jews comprise roughly 2% of the actual population. Unless the poll was taken exclusively in Manhattan–or Hollywood–this is indeed a weird result. The only explanation I can come up with for this discrepancy is the entertainment industry, where artists and behind-the-scenes folks are disproportionately (that is, well over 2%) Jewish. For similar reasons, I’d guess people would radically overestimate the percentage of homosexuals in society.
