US Congressman Ritchie Torres traveled to Atlanta on Tuesday on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris’s election campaign to address a Jewish audience.
Why Torres?
Because the progressive Democrat from the Bronx is among the staunchest, most vocal supporters Israel has in Congress, let alone in the Democratic Party.
And why Atlanta?
Because it is home to Georgia’s largest Jewish community, and the Peach State is one of seven swing states that will decide the upcoming US presidential elections.
It is not only Arab-Americans in the battleground state of Michigan that matter in this election; so do Jews in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, and – yes – Michigan as well. This is why Torres was dispatched to Atlanta. The two other swing states, Wisconsin and North Carolina, have less substantial Jewish populations, so their votes are unlikely to determine the election’s outcome.
But not so in those other five states. In the 2020 elections, US President Joe Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by a narrow 11,799 votes. This was a reversal from the 2016 elections when Trump won the state by 5% of the vote. So, Georgia is very much in play.
The Jewish population in Georgia is estimated at 140,000, or – according to the Jewish Electorate Institute – about 1.3% of the state’s electorate. Interestingly, while more than half (54%) of these voters – according to the JEI study – identify or lean toward the Democratic Party, this is significantly lower than the Jewish electorate nationally (65%).
This means that if a small percentage of Georgia’s Jews switch party allegiance in the upcoming election, it could have a huge impact on the elections – which explains why Torres traveled to Atlanta on Tuesday.
The Harris campaign needs to shore up Jewish support in the swing states or face losing the election. Likewise, one pathway to victory for the Trump campaign would be to chip away at Jewish support for the Democrats in these critical states.
Take Pennsylvania, for instance.
This state – whose Jewish governor, Josh Shapiro, was passed over by Harris as her running mate in favor of Tim Walz – is considered a must-win in either candidate’s path to the White House.
According to JEI, in 2021, the 300,000 Jewish voters in Pennsylvania made up 3.5% of the state’s registered voters. Trump won the state in 2016, and Biden reversed that in 2020, winning by a narrow 1.17% margin. Here, too, a slight change in Jewish voting patterns could have a major impact.
Or consider Arizona, a state Biden carried in 2020 by a 10,457-vote margin, or 0.3%. Arizona has some 115,000 Jewish adults, or about 3% of the electorate.
Nevada is another example: Biden won that state in 2020 by fewer than 34,000 votes. There are an estimated 80,000 Jewish voters there, not an insignificant number, and one that could very well affect the outcome there as well.
A poll released Wednesday, commissioned by the Jewish Democratic Council of America, affiliated with the Democratic Party, showed that 71% of Jewish voters in the swing states will vote for Harris. If accurate, that would mean Harris would do better in 2024 in these states than Biden did nationally among Jews in 2020 when he garnered 68% of the Jewish vote, compared to Trump’s 30%.
However, the results of that poll – commissioned by a body affiliated with the Democratic Party – are at odds with other recent polls, and some may view these results somewhat skeptically.
As reported in a Jewish Insider article last month, polling commissioned by Teach Coalition, a Jewish educational advocacy group affiliated with the Orthodox Union, found Harris underperforming among Jews in Pennsylvania. According to this poll, Harris led Trump by only 11% in the state in a survey conducted in late July.
During the same period, a Siena College poll of New York voters found that Trump actually led Harris among likely Jewish voters in that state by 1% in a two-way race.
Nationally, a Pew poll from late August to early September found Harris leading Trump among Jews by a 65%-34% margin, which would be the worst performance for a Democratic presidential candidate since Michael Dukakis won “only” 64% of the Jewish vote in his 1988 campaign against George Bush in 1988.
WHAT THIS all demonstrates is that the Jewish vote in the upcoming election is both critical and not something either candidate can take for granted – the reason not only for Torres’s trip to Atlanta but also the way both candidates used this week, the first anniversary of October 7, to articulate support for Israel.Trump’s support was full-throated – as he only stands to benefit from expressing solid words of support for Israel. Any movement of Jewish voters toward his campaign, even the smallest, could be significant, and those in the Republican Party who support the Palestinians over Israel, as expressed in national polling, are marginal.
On October 7, Trump first went to the grave of the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in Brooklyn; and later, at a memorial event in Miami, spoke in no uncertain terms about standing by Israel.
“The bond between the United States and Israel is strong and enduring.... If and when I’m president of the United States, it will, once again, be stronger and closer than it ever was before,” he said. “We have to win this election. If we don’t win this election, there’s tremendous consequence for everything.”
Trump said that the November 5 election – meaning whether he wins or loses – will be “the most important day in Israeli history.”
“I will not allow the Jewish state to be threatened with destruction, I will not allow another Holocaust of the Jewish people,” he pledged. “I will not allow a jihad to be waged on America or our allies, and I will support Israel’s right to win its war on terror, and it has to win it fast.”
Trump’s choice of words here was notable, as he did not use the phrase “support Israel’s right to defend itself,” but, rather, “support Israel’s right to win its war on terror.” In other words, Israel not only has the right to parry punches from the other side (defend itself), but also to deliver a knockout blow (win).
The night before, however, in an interview with radio broadcaster Hugh Hewitt, Trump once again raised concerns among some Jews when he said, “I did more for Israel than anybody, I did more for the Jewish people than anybody, and it’s not reciprocal, as they say.”
That remark about a lack of reciprocity echoed comments he made in September that seemed to partly blame the Jews if he were not to win the upcoming election: “If I don’t win this election – and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because if 40%, I mean, 60% of the people are voting for the enemy, Israel, in my opinion, will cease to exist within two years.”
Harris's 60 Minutes interview
UNLIKE TRUMP, Harris’s words on Israel this week – in a 60 Minutes interview, in her statement on October 7, and in comments she made at a memorial event at her residence – demonstrate her recognition of deep divisions within her party on Israel and her effort to navigate the issue.
In her October 7 statement, she was very forceful in condemning Hamas’s attack: “What Hamas did that day was pure evil – it was brutal and it was sickening.”
She pledged to do everything “in my power to ensure that the threat Hamas poses is eliminated, that it is never again able to govern Gaza, that it fails in its mission to annihilate Israel, and that the people of Gaza are free from the grip of Hamas.”
And, she added, “I will always ensure Israel has what it needs to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists like Hamas. My commitment to the security of Israel is unwavering.”
Where Trump said he supports Israel’s right to win the war against terror, Harris – acknowledging “the scale of death and destruction” in Gaza over the past year during a war launched by Hamas’s attack – repeated her long-standing call for a hostage and ceasefire deal “to end the suffering of innocent people.”
She added in this statement to commemorate the October 7 slaughter: “I will always fight for the Palestinian people to be able to realize their right to dignity, freedom, security, and self-determination.”
With these carefully crafted words, Harris was expressing strong support for Israel and acknowledging the horror of October 7 and Israel’s right to respond, while also recognizing the Palestinian toll. It is clear that she was trying to balance both sides: supporting Israel strongly, without alienating the progressive wing in her party angered by the administration’s support for Israel; appealing to Arab voters in Dearborn, as well as Jewish ones in Philadelphia.
That same balancing act – supporting Israel while placating the progressives – was apparent in her 60 Minutes interview, an interview where a winding, rather incoherent answer to a question about whether the US has influence on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – a segment ABC teased in the buildup for the interview – was replaced when the interview was broadcast in full with a shorter reply: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”
Efforts to straddle the fence between those in her party who loathe Netanyahu and those who support Israel were clear. Her answer to the question of whether the US has a “really close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu” was nothing if not artful: “I think, with all due respect, the better question is, do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes.”
This week demonstrated clearly that both Harris and Trump are acutely aware that how they relate to Israel right now will have an impact on how at least some Jews – a key swing-state demographic – will cast their ballots.