This year, the RJC is running the most advanced, sophisticated, and data-driven approach ever used to persuade and turn out Jewish voters in battleground states. Our efforts are getting results – and media attention.
• Omri Nahmias at the Jerusalem Post reports:
With less than four weeks until Election Day, both the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) are preparing for the final stretch effort, including phone banking, TV ads with celebrities, and targeted ads online.
…Matt Brooks, executive director for the RJC, told the Post that there’s no change to the coalition’s plan due to President Donald Trump’s illness. “Our plan was put in place back in 2018, and we’ve been executing it since then. We are committed to spending $10 million in our outreach efforts to the Jewish community this election,” he said.
“We have recently announced the launch of a $3.5m. TV ad buy in Florida, and we continue to execute our grassroots plan, which has already resulted in over 400,000 direct voter contacts with likely Trump supporters and persuadable Jewish voters.” He said that the RJC’s efforts are focused on critical battleground states: Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia.
“Our mail program has just been started,” he added. “We plan to mail over 500,000 pieces of mail to our target voter list in those key battleground states and, given the technological innovations that have been implemented this year, we’ve got the most sophisticated voter ID turnout operation ever in history, so we know everybody who we believe is a persuadable voter based on our voter ID calls or is a committed Trump voter.”
Brooks said that the RJC system could tell if a voter requested a vote by mail or absentee ballot and will know when that ballot has been returned. “We will know on a real-time basis if they have voted early, and so [we could] target specific messages – for instance, to the people who requested an absentee ballot but haven’t turned it in yet, who we think is the likely voter for us,” he noted.
“We’ll make sure to give them a message to remind them to turn in their ballot. If they voted early, we would know we don’t have to work on them to maximize turnout on Election Day, so we take them off the ‘Election Day, get out the vote’ effort.”
…“This is basically a 48% Democrat 48% Republican polarized electorate. So we’re working hard to win over the four or five percent of the people in the middle who are undecided,” he said. “And I remain confident that when the election is over, it will demonstrate that the president increased his share of the Jewish vote compared to 2016… there’s no question in my mind that this race is still competitive.”
• In a report in the Times of Israel about the Modern Orthodox Jewish community’s voting patterns, reporter Jacob Magid writes:
Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks said that his group is realistic in recognizing that Trump won’t be able to receive the vast majority of the Jewish vote come November. But he is confident that Trump would be able to build on the 24% of the Jewish vote that he won in 2016, asserting that crossing the 30% mark may prove key to victory in a close election.
“We don’t need a majority. [Republican Florida Governor Ron] Desantis won [the 2018 election] by less than 40,000 votes, thanks in no small part to the Jewish community,” Brooks said.
“Because we see a clear correlation between the level of one’s religious observance with the likelihood that they’ll vote Republican, Orthodox Jews are absolutely among those we’ll be targeting to come out for the president,” Brooks said.
He did not differentiate between strands of Orthodoxy, but said that the propensity of the movement’s members to live in swing states such as Florida, along with their tendency to vote in higher numbers than other subgroups, gives them outsized influence on election day.
• Our newest ads in Florida, “Deal of the Century” and “Fights for Us” were the subject of a JTA report this week.
• According to the New Jersey Globe, a debate this week between Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ-3) and his Republican Jewish challenger David Richter included an exchange about the RJC’s television ad running in that district, which points out Kim’s record as an Obama administration official. Kim’s bad advice at that time helped ISIS rise up in Iraq.
