A day after the leaders of Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates signed a breakthrough agreement at the White House, the Trump campaign will launch a new Jewish coalition in an effort to break Democrats’ grip on a small but potentially decisive sliver of the electorate.
Even so, President Trump faces an uphill battle to attract Jewish voters, according to analysts, although allies believe he may be able to woo enough support to make a difference in battleground states.
On Tuesday, leaders from Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords at the White House, offering Trump a diplomatic victory.
And on Wednesday, the Trump campaign will launch its Jewish coalition. Boris Epshteyn, Trump 2020 strategic adviser and co-chair of Jewish Voices for Trump, said the president’s record showed he was a great friend of Israel, in contrast to Democrats.
“They are turning their back on our Israeli allies, minimizing the Holocaust, and fomenting anarchy in our streets,” he said. “In stark contrast to the radical, hateful Democrats, President Trump remains the most ardent champion of the Jewish community and friend to the state of Israel.”
Yet the scale of the challenge he faces in attracting Jewish voters was laid out in a poll published on Monday. The nonpartisan Jewish Electorate Institute found Trump trailed Biden by 67% to 30% among Jewish voters, despite a bump from his Middle East diplomacy.
Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said Tuesday’s signing meant things were moving in the president’s direction, albeit gradually.
“Because of the signing ceremony today and because of the incredible record and accomplishments of this president, which have been historic, I am very confident that the president is going to do better among Jewish voters in 2020 than he did in 2016,” he said.
Exit polls suggest Trump captured about 24% of the Jewish vote last time around, roughly in line with Republican candidates in the previous four elections.
The Republican Jewish Coalition is spending $10 million in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan in the hope that wooing a point or two of the Jewish vote from Biden in battleground states could be enough to deliver an electoral victory to Trump.
The venerable group published a full-page advert in the New York Times to coincide with the signing ceremony, proclaiming Trump a “peacemaker.”
“President Trump, you are a statesman who has done what no others could do: moving the embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, brokering this historic deal with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain,” it said.
The agreement, normalizing relations between two Gulf Arab states and Israel, paves the way for greater security, commercial, and diplomatic cooperation. And it delivers Trump a foreign policy win a week before he is due to address the U.N. General Assembly and less than 50 days before November’s election.
But while Trump’s supporters play up his moves in Israel, analysts point out that the Middle East is generally only one of a number of factors that influence Jewish voters.
Michael Hanna, Middle East expert at the Century Foundation, said: “I don’t think this is going to change votes in the United States.”
“One-issue voters who are impressed by this are already voting for Trump.”
The JEI poll found that Israel was only the 11th most important issue for Jewish voters, lagging behind domestic issues — from the economy and healthcare to police brutality and systematic racism. However, 82% of respondents cited anti-Semitism as an issue of importance when they come to decide their vote.
Michael Koplow, policy director at the Israel Policy Forum, said the same dynamics were playing out in all demographic groups.
“Like every other issue that we see with President Trump, he’s polarizing, and people tend to look at what he’s doing not so much by the action itself but by their view of Trump, the person and the president,” he said. “People who like Trump view these actions as great; people who don’t like Trump see these actions as not so great.”
But for Brooks and the Jewish Republican Coalition, the aim is to treat Israel as one of a number of issues that can be microtargeted to voters in an effort to appeal to those concerned about anti-Semitism, the state of the economy, campaigns to defund the police, and school choice.
It’s an approach they say bore fruit in Florida, helping Ron DeSantis to the governor’s mansion two years ago with a campaign that attacked his Democratic rival for links to groups critical of Israel.
“There’s no question that his significant increase in Jewish support helped propel him to victory in that election,” said Brooks. “That’s the same model that I think will be in play here.”
