WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. – Rachel Weinberg called herself first a religious Jew, then a proud American. She said she had only one choice to be president: Donald Trump.

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

Weinberg’s home in vote-rich West Bloomfield in Oakland County was one of about 20 that the Republican Jewish Coalition visited that morning. She also voted for Trump in the previous election.

The door-to-door campaign among Jewish voters who traditionally support Republicans is part of a new effort the group is undertaking this year in five presidential battleground states in hopes of strengthening Trump over to the Democrats. Kamala Harris in the November 5 election. Although polls show that Jews vote solidly Democratic, the Republican Jewish Coalition hopes that door-to-door canvassing will remove enough votes to make a difference in an election year where the war between Israel and Hamas fueled 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 survey of the electorate. A Pew Research Center poll released last month found that about two-thirds of Jewish voters support Harris.

Biden won Michigan in 2020 by fewer than 155,000 votes out of about 5.5 million votes cast. Although Jewish voters make up only 2% of the state’s voters, the 15,000 new Jewish Republican voters the coalition has identified since the 2020 election — out of about 120,000 Jewish voters in the state — could have an impact in what promises to be a very close race, said Sam Markstein, RJC spokesperson.

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

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

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

The coalition’s robust efforts are aimed at chipping away at Democrats’ advantages within this voting bloc. “This includes direct mail, social and digital media, all hyper-targeted to the Jewish community. And it will be a large-scale investment, the largest ever to bring Jewish voters to the Republicans,” Markstein said.

The Republican Jewish Coalition purchased $15 million worth of advertising in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. But it’s the $5 million committed to door-to-door canvassing that’s new for this election, primarily its investment in voter data aimed at more effectively identifying potential Trump supporters.

Halie Soifer, executive director 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 become a dictator from 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 hostage. More than 42,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza in the ensuing fighting, according to Gaza health officials.

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

The fighting has intensified attention to relations between Israel and the United States, resulting in at least $17.9 billion in military aid since the start of the war. And many Jews say rising anti-Semitism in the United States and anti-Israel protests in cities and on college campuses have put them in danger. Nedivi, who was canvassing Sunday, said he experienced anti-Semitism at the University of Michigan he attends.

Zeke Aharonov had an alternative message for his Jewish co-religionists after waiting in line in front of more than 200 people to vote early at the West Bloomfield Library on Sunday.

“As Jews, it is our duty to be alert to fascism and to fight it,” the 26-year-old cybersecurity technician said as he left the library. “And our way to fight fascism is to vote against Donald Trump.”

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Poling reporter Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed to this report from Washington.