Obama and Romney in second debate
Obama and Romney in second debateAFP/Stan Honda

The IDB/TIPP daily tracking poll has gone back to showing U.S. Jewish voters heavily favoring Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to Republican Mitt Romney.

The results for October 11 through 15 had raised some eyebrows, as they showed the two candidates neck-and-neck, and even gave Romney an occasional advantage.

Even given Romney's post-debate bounce, it appeared unlikely that American Jews, who for decades have preferred Democratic candidates, would have undergone such a transformation.

IDB/TIPP warned that the sample size regarding Jews was small and that the results should therefore be interpreted with caution. The total sample size in the poll was 913 – most of them, of course, non-Jews.

Israel has been careful, overall, not to interfere in the U.S. presidential race. However, an exception to this rule was a statement made by former ambassador Zalman Shoval, who serves as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's special envoy to the United States and Europe. Shoval criticized what he said was the Obama administration's dithering regarding Iran's nuclear weapons program.

"The Obama administration's 'red line' is wavering and the Iranians are reaching dangerous conclusions from that," Shoval told the Foreign Policy blog in a post published Monday.

It remains to be seen whether statements such as these will do anything to sway U.S. Jewish voters away from support for Obama.