Our Activities
Polling
JEI strives to provide the best available data on the American Jewish electorate To better understand the Jewish electorate, JEI periodically commissions non-partisan polls of Jewish voters. Our polls explore the nuances of issues related to Jewish voting behavior and help to inform public discourse in advance of elections, including which political parties Jewish voters identify with, which key public figures they view favorably and unfavorably, where they stand on key issues, and which issues Jewish voters care most about when casting their ballots.
Civic Engagement
JEI’s message to the Jewish community is as follows: irrespective of individual political leanings, participation in our democracy is a Jewish value and an important part of our Jewish American identity. By using media resources, JEI has created tailored messages intended to target specific segments of the Jewish electorate. In the 2018 midterm elections, our messages targeted newly-eligible and millennial Jewish voters via social media with information about voter registration, polling locations, and the importance of civic engagement. In the 2020 General Election and the runoff elections in Georgia, JEI deployed an ad campaign to target young Jewish voters to register to vote and to cast their ballots.
Get Out The Vote
Jewish Americans represent a critically important segment of the American electorate, and JEI believes that it is important for our voices to be heard at the polling place to ensure that our concerns are adequately represented by our elected officials. In the 2018 midterm election, JEI initiated a nonpartisan Get Out the Vote (GOTV) campaign aimed at maximizing turnout among Jewish Americans nationally. JEI’s GOTV messages targeted younger voters, who are less likely to vote, and focused on the importance of civic participation.
Research
JEI commissioned a national profile of the Jewish electorate in 2020 and issued reports on the political leanings of Jewish voters in swing states, as well as young voters (18-35) and Independents. JEI conducted qualitative research on the rise of antisemitism in the United States.
This data, along with our polling, has helped to inform the public conversation surrounding the Jewish vote and received widespread media coverage.
One of JEI’s latest projects involves gathering data on the geographic distribution of the Jewish electorate at the congressional district level.This data will be critical in expanding the public’s understanding of the Jewish electorate, as it will be the first major national study of Jewish demographic distribution countrywide that reflects new congressional boundaries in every state that were redrawn following the 2020 census.
