The Shift: Poll shows Trump with slight edge among Arab American voters

Poll shows Trump has small lead among Arab voters

A new Arab News/YouGov poll shows GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump with a slight lead over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris among Arab American voters. 45% of respondents said they would likely vote for Trump, while 43% said they’d likely vote for Harris. 4% said they’d vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

39% of those polled said Trump was more likely “to successfully resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict”, while 33% said the same of Harris. Both candidates got 38% when respondents were asked who would be better for the Middle East.

When asked what the biggest issue of the election was for them, 29% chose Gaza.

These numbers align with a recent Arab American Institute poll, in which 42% of respondents said they’d vote for Trump and 41% said they would vote for Harris.

The Trump campaign seems acutely aware of the growing anger and frustration toward the Biden administration over Israel’s war on Gaza.

On the right-wing social media site Truth Social he attacked Harris over being endorsed by former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney.

“If Kamala gets four more years, the Middle East will spend the next four decades going up in flames, and your kids will be going off to War, maybe even a Third World War, something that will never happen with President Donald J. Trump in charge,” wrote Trump.

Here’s Richard Eskow breaking down some of the recent polling at Common Dreams:

The AAI poll showed Trump leading Harris by 46 percent to 42 percent among Arab American voters, a dramatic shift from Biden’s lead of 59 percent to Trump’s 35 percent at the same point in 2020. (This polling was conducted before Israel attacked Lebanon, where ongoing events may make these numbers even worse for Democrats.)

To explore the impact of this shift on swing states, I put the AAI’s new polling numbers into a spreadsheet, cross-tabulated them with the total number of eligible Arab American voters in swing states, and used past Arab American voter participation rates to estimate the shift in votes,

(Note: The AAI was kind enough to provide one data point for this effort, but the consultant in me demands that I point out a) that these are approximations based on available data, and that b) that any errors are mine alone.)

That said: There are more than 750,000 Arab Americans of voting age in swing states. Based on AAI’s polling shift, Democrats could lose between 115,000 and 130,000 Arab-American votes in these states.

If the losses were proportional to the voting-age population by state, Democrats could lose:

• 50,000 votes in Michigan
• 10,000 votes in Pennsylvania
• 50,000 more in other swing states

That’s 100,000 swing-state votes lost because of the ongoing U.S. support for carnage in Gaza.

But Arab Americans aren’t the only voters Gaza will lose for Democrats.

A surprising number of people, including some news staffers, tend to conflate Arab Americans and Muslim Americans. That’s a major mistake. Most Arab Americans are Christian, while only about one in four is Muslim.

Conversely, while Muslim-American census information is hard to come by, an analysis of immigration data suggests that most Muslim Americans are not of Arab descent. Among immigrants, who comprised roughly 60 percent of Muslims in that study, South Asians were the largest group, making up roughly one-third of the Muslim-American population, while approximately one in four came from Arab countries. That leaves many lost votes uncounted.

Pro-Israel voices attack Harris over comments to protester

At a campaign stop at the University of Wisconsin this past weekend Kamala Harris was confronted by a student protester who asked her about the Biden administration’s support for the genocide in Gaza.

Here’s some of the exchange:

Harris: “I respect your right to speak. I’m speaking right now. But I know what you’re speaking of.”

Student: “What about the genocide?”

Harris: “I want the cease-fire. I want the deal done. I want the war to end. But I am speaking right now.”

While being escorted away by security the student yelled about the thousands who have been killed. “Why won’t you call it a genocide?,” he asked.

“Look, what he’s talking about, it’s real,” said Harris. “That’s not the subject that I came to discuss today, but it’s real.”

It seems pretty clear that Harris was referring to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and not the student’s reference to genocide, but this didn’t stop pro-Israel voices from attacking the Vice President.

“A very dangerous precedent,” tweeted former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren. “I was disturbed to view the video in which Vice President Kamala Harris appears to confirm the charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This is the first time that the White House has been linked to a libel which threatens Israel’s legitimacy and security. I call on the U.S. administration to issue an immediate and complete denial.”

Right-wing media outlets have embraced Oren’s position. “Harris appears to agree with protester accusing Israel of genocide,” declared Fox News. “What she said was extremely problematic for Israel,” said a pundit on Channel 12.