Arab-American enthusiasm for voting dampens as Harris, Trump appear neck-and-neck: Poll
A
year into US-backed assault on Gaza, Arab Americans seem intent on
punishing Democrats by also favouring Republican control of Congress
Arab
Americans hold a vigil at Islamic Center of America for victims of
Israeli attacks in Lebanon, in Dearborn, Michigan, on 20 September 2024
(Rebecca Cook/Reuters)
Published date: 3 October 2024
New
polling suggests US Vice President Kamala Harris and former President
Donald Trump are in a dead heat among Arab Americans for the race to the
White House, though this has traditionally been a community that easily
favoured Democrats - at least for the last thirty years.
The shift in attitudes is largely attributed
to the year-long Israeli assault on Gaza, which has been carried out
with the full support of the Biden administration, with no end in
sight.
Figures published by the Arab American Institute (AAIUSA) on
Wednesday show that the two leading presidential candidates are
virtually tied among voters: Trump has a lead of one percentage point
over Harris, at 42 percent to 41.
The remaining 17 percent is almost equally divided between
third-party candidates and those who are unsure how they want to vote.
Among those who identified as Democrats, only 79 percent support
Harris, while 89 percent of those who identified as Republicans said
they support Trump.
“[Harris] has certainly rebounded from where Biden was when we polled
last - from 17 to 41. But it also says that she has not regained the
numbers that Biden had in 2020, or I believe what Democrats need to
win,” AAIUSA president James Zogby told Middle East Eye.
Support for Donald Trump between 2020 and 2024 remained mostly
stable, from 35 to 42 percent, while the undecided respondents dropped
from 25 to just five percent.
The Gaza factor
Among those who identified as Democrats, the respondents said the war on Gaza is their number one issue.
Across all those polled, 26 percent put Gaza in the top three issues which would impact their ballot.
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When asked how it would affect their vote if Harris demanded an
Israeli ceasefire and unimpeded humanitarian aid into Gaza, 54 percent
of Arab-American voters said they’d be more likely to support her, and
that includes 35 percent of the respondents who said they would vote for
Trump.
The figure increases slightly when voters are asked about Harris
ending arms shipments to Israel: 56 percent of respondents said they
would be more likely to lend her their support.
Arab Americans also said they would have been more likely to support
Harris had the Democratic Party allowed a Palestinian-American speaker
on the main stage at its August convention: 55 percent of them would
have been willing to change their approach.
“What that says to me is not ‘I'm for Trump’. It's ‘I'm against her -
but if she did this, well, I’d think differently about it,’” Zogby told
MEE. “There's a softness to the rejection that could be turned around
if she did something. The question is, will she do it?”
Rejection of Democrats
AAIUSA's executive summary said that the results are unprecedented.
“In our thirty years of polling Arab-American voters, we have not
witnessed anything like the role that the war on Gaza is having on voter
behaviour.”
“The year-long unfolding genocide in Gaza has impacted every
component sub-group within the community - with only slight variations
among religious communities and countries of origin, immigrant or
native-born, gender and age groups.”
That is seen to have contributed to the drop in enthusiasm for voting, according to the survey.
Only 63 percent of respondents said they were eager to vote in this year's November election.
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“Our turnouts have always been high,” Zogby said, pointing out the
usual 80 percent range. Now, he warned, there is a “danger” of fewer
people making their voices heard.
Just 67 percent of Democrats said they were enthusiastic about
voting, compared to 80 percent of respondents who identified as
Republican.
When asked which side should control Congress, significantly more
Republicans than Democratic respondents picked their own party.
Eighty-four percent of Democrats preferred Democratic control of
Congress, compared to 96 percent of Republicans who preferred Republican
control.
“I'm getting the feeling that there's a rejection here of things
associated with Democrats,” Zogby said. “There's a real frustration
right now with some parts of the community.”
Sally Howell, a professor of history and Arab-American studies at the
University of Michigan-Dearborn, said that was an understatement.
She told MEE she’s surprised by the figures which suggest at least 40
percent of Arab Americans could turn out for Harris or the Democrats.
“Most of the people who are on the left are moving toward someone
like [Green Party candidate Jill] Stein or they're moving toward not
voting in the presidential election,” Howell said. “They're not moving
toward voting for Trump… I can't imagine either candidate getting 40
percent of the Arab American or Middle Eastern American vote in
Michigan.”
‘Beyond the pale’
Michigan, a battleground state that could go either way in the
election, is pivotal to winning the White House. And within it lies the
largest Arab and Muslim community in the US, which also heavily skews
Lebanese.
The AAIUSA survey was conducted between 9-20 September and includes
the period during which Israel carried out two waves of pager explosions
across southern Lebanon but before the heaviest bombings that killed
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
The city of Dearborn, a Detroit suburb, saw a number of funerals in absentia for family members killed by Israel.
Howell said there has been a “complete disregard of Arab life” by the Biden administration as the violence escalates.
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“You can't vote for an administration that supports these policies.
You just can't. That's what I'm hearing people say,” she told MEE.
“What's already happened is beyond the pale, and people are just not
going to vote for either of the two major candidates.”
AAIUSA estimates that some 3.7 million people in the US identify as Arab.
When MEE asked why the presidential campaigns should pay attention to this latest poll, Zogby had one question in return.
“Want to win Michigan?” he said.
Howell added that “people are desperate for this administration to
reach out to them to show that they value the lives of Arab people”.
“If that happens, if they are treated as though their votes matter,
their political contributions matter, their contributions to American
society and culture - which are vast - matter… then people would love to
work with the Democrats.”
The AAIUSA survey is based on 500 respondents who identify as Arab Americans and who are all registered to vote.
In the US, citizens over the age of 18 must actively register to vote
in their state of residence, sometimes months before an election takes
place.
The margin of error for the 500 respondents in this survey is +/- 4.5 percentage points.