Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein leads Vice President Kamala Harris by nearly 18 points with Arab American voters, according to a poll.
The poll, conducted by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and Mo Maraqa, found that 45.3 percent of Arab American voters back Stein for the presidency, placing her almost 18 points above Harris at 27.5 percent.
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Another 2 percent back former President Donald Trump, and 1.3 percent support Robbery F Kennedy Jr. Of the remaining respondents, 17.9 percent are undecided, and 6 percent will not vote.
ADC Executive Director Abed Ayoub shared the poll results to X on Tuesday. The poll included 3,130 responses collected July 27 and 28. The margin of error was not specified.
According to Ayoub, Harris’s poor showing is better than President Joe Biden’s showing in ADC’s May poll, which was seven percent. However, her numbers are still a far cry from Biden’s popularity with Arab Americans in 2020 before his handling of the Israel-Hamas war torpedoed his support in the community.
In the lead-up to that election, a Zogby Analytics poll commissioned by the Arab American Institute (AAI) showed Arab Americans voting for Biden over Trump by a margin of 59 percent to 35 percent. That poll sampled 805 Arab Americans from October 4-12, 2020, and the margin of error was ± 3.5 percentage points.
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The Democrat Arab American and Muslim vote was crucial to propelling Biden to narrow victories in Michigan and Wisconsin. But Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war has caused severe frustration with his and Harris’s administration, with feelings of betrayal running deep in Muslim and Arab-American dense communities in Michigan.
Ahead of the Michigan primary, where the anti-Biden uncommitted movement began with more than 100,000 “uncommitted” votes protesting his candidacy, New York Times columnist Charles Blow caught up with Arab American and Muslim leaders in Michigan.
Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Michigan’s executive director Dawud Walid “said that for most Muslims, anything short of Biden ‘resurrecting 29,000 dead Palestinians like Jesus’ would mean that they will never vote for him again,” Blow wrote.
Since then, Palestinian authorities say the death toll is up to 39,000 people, Reuters noted.
The ADC poll indicates frustrations over the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the war have not evaporated now that Biden is off the ticket and Harris is the presumptive nominee, though they may have softened.
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The threat that hundreds of thousands of uncommitted voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere made clear to Biden was that they would stay home in November, barring a radical change in policy.
Last week, Harris met privately with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reported afterward she told him that “Israel has the right to defend itself.”
“And as I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done. So to everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire, and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you and I hear you,” she added.
After Israel carried out a strike on Hezbollah on Tuesday, Harris defended the Jewish State.
“What we know in particular is it (Israel) has the right to defend itself against a terrorist organization, which is exactly what Hezbollah is,” she Harris, as the AFP noted.
Looking at the poll through the broader context, the uncommitted movement, which consists of young voters, Arab Americans, Muslims, and progressives, is threatening Harris’s shot to be president.
As this poll shows an utter lack of excitement among Arab-Americans compared to enthusiasm for Biden in the 2020 documented AAI poll, the problem is lingering for Harris. And worrying for Democrats is that the share of uncommitted voters in key swing states neared or surpassed the vote margins Biden by won in 2020.
For example, Biden won Michigan by 154,188 votes in 2020. In the 2024 Democrat primary, 101,430 Democrats voted “uncommitted” in protest of Biden.
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In Minnesota, 45,914 Democrat primary voters rejected Biden with “uncommitted” votes. That is more than the 44,593 votes that twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton carried the state by in 2016.
Thirdly, the 48,812 Wisconsinites cast “uninstructed” protest ballots, more than doubling the 20,682 margin in Biden’s 2020 victory.
If these voters theoretically stayed home in protest of the Biden-Harris administration, that would put Harris in very dangerous territory. That is before taking into account swing voters who could be swayed on inflation, the economy, immigration, crime, national security, and the auto industry.
Furthermore, tensions over the handling of the war on the left could impact Harris’s running mate selection.
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), viewed as a rising star on the left, has been widely discussed as a top candidate to be Harris’s running mate. But liberal journalists have fretted over pro-Israel support and how it could undermine Michigan for Democrats, Breitbart News reported:
As a vice-presidential nominee, Shapiro “could help deliver the essential state of Pennsylvania, but his ardent support for Israel and criticism of pro-Gaza campus protests would reopen wounds in the Democratic Party that have lately started to heal,” said Michelle Goldberg, a columnist at the New York Times.
“Shapiro would be an excellent vice-presidential candidate,” added Pamela Paul, an independent-minded liberal at the New York Times. “But given the unfortunate but real antisemitism on the left right now …. this may not be the right time for a Jewish Democratic presidential candidate.”
“He’s Jewish — there could be some risk in putting him on the ticket,” John King told a CNN audience.
If he is selected, it is possible Shapiro could produce a low turnout in Michigan and also hurt Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) in her Senate bid against former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI).
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