Jquery.data returning undefined results

I'm trying to do is get a list of items from a node js server create li tags dynamically for each one, then somehow embed the ID that is coming from the server in each created HTML element as a custom attribute or an ID. I hope this make sense.
Thanks in advanced for taking the time to help, I'm kinda new to this, so any help would be highly appreciated.
What am I doing wrong? and is there another way to accomplish this?
I included the code I tried below.

//First getting thelist of items from the server
items.forEach(function(item) {
//adding the list to a variable to append later on to the html page
          var newItem= `<li>${item.name}</li>`;
            //I tried Jquery.data and .attr and both returns undefined
           $(newItem).data('id', item._id);
//I also tried the vanilla javascript method: .setAttribute and I get an error that it's not a function.
          newItem.setAttribute('id', item._id);

               console.log($(item).data('id'));//undefined result