Republican Jewish Coalition touts ‘historic shift’ to Trump in 2024 election

“That’s the highest total for any Republican presidential candidate since 1988, and a full third higher than Trump’s own showing in his first campaign in 2016,” said John Lerner, who works with RJC as a pollster.

Matt Brooks, CEO of the RJC, said the organization is “ecstatic” “both with the election results for President Trump and the historic change in Jewish voting.”

The vast majority of Jews have consistently voted Democratic in previous cycles, but the war between Israel and Hamas has sparked divisions as a surge in anti-Semitism sparked by last year’s attack in Israel led to mass protests.

“For those who care deeply about Israel, this election has been a life saver—this election has enormous implications on how best to defend Israel, how best to combat Hamas and Hezbollah,” said Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary for George W. Bush at an RJC briefing with reporters on Wednesday.

“I think Hamas can even release the hostages before January 20, 2025, which we all know is historical,” Fleischer added.

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However, the exit polls were somewhat contradictory. A CNN exit poll showed Harris leading Trump among Jewish voters 79% to 21%. Lerner downplays the results of this exit poll, emphasizing that it was not a national poll and that he interviewed fewer self-identified Jewish voters.

“The poll was conducted in only ten states, and in New York and New Jersey, interviews were not conducted with the largest and fourth largest Jewish populations in the country, home to 28 percent of all Jewish voters nationwide,” Lerner said. “Another shortcoming is that the exit poll surveyed only 460 Jews, one-eighth the size of the AP study.”

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

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

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

“Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar—they defined this crisis for many Jews,” he said. “Democrats need to deny and disavow them because they are clearly damaging to Democrats and the Democratic brand.”

“The sooner Democrats decide to separate themselves from these people, very forcefully and loudly, the better.”

The Fox News analysis comes after the organization spent $15 million on advertising in various battleground states this cycle and launched a sophisticated microtargeting effort based on the collected data, identifying Jewish voters who could be persuaded to vote for Trump in critical fields battles.

“We targeted advertising directly to the set-top boxes and smart TVs in the homes of the people we were targeting,” Brooks said. “This way we could target at the lowest level exactly who we wanted to see in our advertising based on our modeling and our data.”

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As part of RJC’s advertising, the organization released its final ad before the 2024 election, which featured three Jewish women talking about the attack on Israel and the threat of rising anti-Semitism on college campuses.

“This was not only the largest campaign ever. It was also the most complex and technologically advanced campaign ever,” Brooks added.