KAROL MARKOWICZ: The real Jewish vote: And why it matters.

For me, it’s: Did we put our own survival at the top of the issues pile? Did we see clearly who are friends are and who they are not? Did my people learn lessons? But also to show the outside world: look, we did.

I had anecdotes. Liberal Jewish friends who leaned in over dinners and whispered “I’m voting for him.” One after another made the confession. One couple in particular, lifelong friends of mine, shocked me into silence when they said they had voted Trump. They were committed Democrats (MSNBC watchers! Howard Stern listeners!) who had spent years arguing with me. I knew they didn’t trust Kamala Harris on Israel and I figured they would sit it out. They live in New York, they don’t have to vote. But they did. And they voted for him.

I felt the sea change when Lizzy Savetsky, a Jewish influencer, tipped to Trump. I generally don’t believe that endorsements matter that much. If Oprah and Taylor and Beyoncé couldn’t swing it, who could? But I took Lizzy’s seriously. She’s an important figure in the Jewish world, she’s beautiful and smart, focused on her family and very outspoken. I saw her as representative of a specific voting bloc that I saw emerging: women who are normally repelled by Trump but set that aside to do what’s best for the country. It wasn’t just that she was voting for Trump, it was that she was admitting to it on Sid Rosenberg’s extremely popular New York City morning radio show. Lizzy Savetsky being out with her Trump support, despite the fact that it would hurt her, and cost her followers, made me think something was moving. She wasn’t like Taylor and Beyonce, they took the easy position. She was like Travis Kelce and Jay-Z, neither of whom made endorsements. But Lizzy did.

Anecdotes aren’t data, yes, of course, but data can be bad too. It’s why people recoiled so hard from Ann Selzer’s flawed Iowa poll in the closing days of the presidential election. Her “gold standard” poll showed Trump losing Iowa to Kamala Harris by 3 points. It didn’t make sense. People on the ground in Iowa were dumbfounded. Trump would end up winning Iowa by 13. Her poll was data, not anecdotes, and it was wrong.

Yeah, anecdotes are, in fact data. All facts are data, if you know what to do with them.