Republican Jewish Coalition praises ‘historic shift’ toward Trump in 2024 election

“It’s the highest number for any Republican presidential candidate since 1988 and it’s more than a third higher than what Trump himself showed during his first campaign in 2016,” said Jon Lerner, a pollster with RJC.

Matt Brooks, RJC’s CEO, said the organization was “thrilled” with “both the outcome of President Trump’s election, but also because of the historic shift in the Jewish vote.”

The large majority of the Jewish people have consistently voted for Democrats in previous cycles, but the war between Israel and Hamas has been divisive as a spike in anti-Semitism unleashed by last year’s attack in Israel led to widespread protests.

“For those who care deeply about Israel, this has been a life-saving election – these elections make a huge difference in how best to protect Israel, and how best to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah,” said Ari Fleischer, press secretary from the White House. George W. Bush, in an RJC briefing call with reporters on Wednesday.

“I think it’s even possible that Hamas will release the hostages before January 20, 2025, which we all know has historic ring to it,” Fleischer added.

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Still, the exit poll data was somewhat contradictory. CNN exit polls showed Harris beating Trump 79% to 21% among Jewish voters. Lerner downplays the results of that exit poll, insisting it was not a national poll and interviewing fewer self-identified Jewish voters.

“It was only conducted in 10 states and no interviews were conducted in New York or New Jersey with the nation’s largest and fourth largest Jewish populations, comprising 28 percent of all Jewish voters nationwide,” Lerner said. “The other shortcoming is that the exit poll interviewed only 460 Jews in total, so that is one-eighth the size of the AP investigation.”

Fox News’ voter analysis also found that 46% of New Yorkers who identified as Jewish supported Trump over Harris. By comparison, Trump received 37% of the state’s Jewish vote in 2020, while Biden received 63%.

Jon Reinish, a Jewish Democratic strategist based in New York, said Democrats have not done enough to reassure voters that the party’s left flank does not represent Democrats as a whole.

“Look at the Jewish vote in New York, in a blue state, it has really moved significantly to the right, because I think Jews have seen what’s happening on college campuses and what’s being tolerated on the streets in the subways. I don’t think Jews feel safe,” Reinish said.

“The Rashida Tlaibs and Ilhan Omar – they defined this crisis for many Jews,” he said. “Democrats should deny and disown them because they clearly harm Democrats and the Democratic brand.”

“The sooner Democrats make the decision to separate from these people, very decisively and loudly, the better.”

The Fox News analysis’s findings come after the organization spent $15 million on advertising in battleground states this cycle and launched a sophisticated micro-targeting effort based on data it collected to identify Jewish voters who could be swayed to vote for Trump in critical battlegrounds.

“We sent ads directly to the set-top boxes and smart TVs in the homes of the people we targeted,” Brooks said. “So we were able to micro-target, down to the lowest level, exactly who we wanted to see our ads based on our models and our data.”

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As part of RJC’s advertising, the organization has has released a final ad ahead of the 2024 elections, in which three Jewish women spoke about Israel being under attack and the threat of rising anti-Semitism on college campuses.

“This wasn’t just the biggest campaign ever. It was also the most sophisticated and technologically advanced campaign ever,” Brooks added.