(JNS) Hundreds of thousands of Americans living in Israel are eligible to vote in November’s U.S. elections, including some in swing states whose votes could prove decisive in a close election, the heads of Democratic and Republican organizations in Israel said Thursday.
The remarks come amid a cross-party push to get out the absentee vote in Israel in a highly-charged year, punctuated by the fallout of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and the nearly year-long war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as a global surge of antisemitism.
“While it is hard to gauge how many Americans in Israel will actually vote, we are seeing a lot of motivation because of what happened on Oct. 7 and its aftermath,” Matanya Harow, national director of the non-partisan iVoteIsrael, told JNS. “The war has shown what a big influence the United States has on events here.”
Jews “are among the most consistently liberal and Democratic groups in the U.S. population,” and 70% of U.S. Jewish adults “identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, and half describe their political views as liberal,” Pew Research Center surveys suggest.
Marc Zell, chairman of the Republican Overseas Israel, told JNS that he expects 80% to 90% of American Jews in Israel to vote Republican “primarily because of Oct. 7.”
“The question is how many of them will vote,” he said. “Our biggest challenge is getting them to vote in a process that is logistically complicated.”
Nearly a quarter century after former President George W. Bush won Florida by several hundred votes, the 2024 presidential election is thought to be close to a coin-flip in several swing states.
“When you look at elections being decided by several thousand or less votes, every vote counts, which is why we are reaching out especially to voters in swing states this election more so than times past,” Ethan Kushner, chairman of American Democrats in Israel, told JNS. “We see the same motivations voters had in 2020, with much more vigor.”
Most American Jews living in Israel come from New York, New Jersey and California, which typically vote Democratic, but many also come from swing states, which could determine the outcome of the election.
Harow stressed that voters, who might be disinclined to cast an absentee ballot thinking their vote doesn’t count, have a say in often-tight congressional races. They also have political sway if their representatives are aware that there is a large constituency of voters from their district living in Israel, he said.
Zell said that American Jews living in Israel should also vote out of appreciation for what former President Donald Trump has done for Israel during his term in office and, he said, because it could encourage U.S. evangelical Christians to vote if they see that most Americans in Israel vote Republican.
“The Jewish community in the United States has a severe case of ‘Trump derangement syndrome,’” Zell told JNS. “It is not a rational approach but generational political inertia dating back to how their parents and grandparents voted from the Franklin Roosevelt administration.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt was the U.S. president from 1933 to 1945.)
“With all due respect to the Israeli-American bilateral relations, American voters are voting for American issues not for Israeli issues,” Kushner said. “Israel is not the lynchpin that will determine the outcome of the elections.”
Kushner cited domestic issues that he said are of primary importance to Americans in Israel, including the economy, immigration and abortion. Those issues are foremost on the minds of U.S. voters in Israel now, as they have been in past elections, despite the tumultuous events of the last year in Israel, he said.
Harow, Kushner and Zell encouraged Americans living in Israel to register to vote quickly, as time is running out to mail ballots back to the United States in time to meet state deadlines. After that, voters could submit an absentee ballot, they said.
