By THOMAS BEAUMONT, Associated Press

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (AP) — Rachel Weinberg calls herself first a religious Jew, then a proud American. She said she had only one choice for president: Donald Trump.

“I don’t like everything he’s saying,” the 72-year-old retired preschool teacher from Michigan said after volunteer canvassers for the Republican Jewish Coalition knocked on his door Sunday. “But I vote for Israel. It is our life. I support Israel. Trump supports Israel with his words and actions.”

Weinberg’s home in West Bloomfield, in vote-rich Oakland County, was among more than 20 that the Jewish Republican Coalition was visiting that morning. She voted for Trump in the previous election as well.

Door-to-door outreach to Jewish voters with a history of Republican support is part of a new effort the group is undertaking this year in five presidential battleground states in hopes of boosting Trump over the Democrat. Kamala Harris in Elections of November 5. Although polls show Jews vote decidedly Democratic, the Jewish Republican Coalition hopes the door-knocking will turn out enough votes to make a difference in an election year where war between Israel and Hamas it sparked debate and caused division.

About 7 in 10 Jewish voters nationally supported Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, while about 3 in 10 supported Trump that year, according to AP VoteCast, a broad poll of the electorate. A Pew Research Center poll released last month found that about two-thirds of Jewish voters support Harris.

Biden carried Michigan in 2020 by less than 155,000 votes out of about 5.5 million cast. Although Jewish voters make up only 2 percent of the state’s electorate, the 15,000 new Republican Jewish voters the coalition has identified since the 2020 election — out of roughly 120,000 Jewish voters in the state — could make an impact in what is being touted as a very close race, said RJC spokesman Sam Markstein.

The Republican Jewish Coalition’s targeting is very specific in Michigan, as it is in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Here, its activity is concentrated in Oakland County, the state’s second most populous county, with 1.3 million residents northwest of Detroit.

It is particularly focused on the upper-middle-class suburbs of Farmington Hills, Oak Park, Southfield and West Bloomfield – the township with the state’s largest Jewish population, where Israeli flags hang in some of the front windows.

Biden defeated Trump in 2020, 66 percent to 33 percent, in the West Bloomfield Township precinct, where David Cuttner, 82, and Noam Nedivi, 22, were canvassing for the coalition on Sunday. The margin was not far from the national trend.

The coalition’s robust effort aims to reduce the Democrats’ advantage in this electoral block. “This includes direct mail, social, digital, all hyper-targeted to the Jewish community. And it will be a full push, the largest investment ever to attract Jewish voters for Republicans,” Markstein said.

The Jewish Republican Coalition purchased $15 million in advertising in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. But the $5 million he committed to door-to-door canvassing is new for this election, especially his investment in voter data aimed at more effectively identifying potential Trump supporters.

Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a statement that Jewish voters are a key part of a winning Democratic coalition.

“Kamala Harris shares the views and values ​​of the majority of American Jews, while Donald Trump threatens and denigrates us, traffics in anti-Semitic rhetoric, aligns himself with dangerous extremists and aspires to be dictator on day one,” Soifer said.

Tensions have been high since the war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 hostages. More than 42,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza in the ensuing fighting, according to Gaza health officials.

Republicans were more likely than Democrats to support Israel, while Democrats were more likely to be critical, a September poll by the Pearson Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Public Affairs Research Center found.