Voters with an Arab heritage could tank Vice President Kamala Harris’s chances of carrying the 31 combined Electoral College votes in the key battlegrounds of Michigan and Georgia.
Arab American voters, who typically vote for Democrats by a 2-to-1 ratio, are not so fond of Harris following the administration’s handling of the Hamas/Israel war that spread into Lebanon this month, drawing in the Iranian proxy terrorist organization of Hezbollah.
A recent Arab American Institute poll showed former President Trump leading Harris among Arab voters by four points nationally. In 2020, President Joe Biden won 60 percent of their votes.
The Peach State has one of the fastest-growing Arab American populations in the country with around 43,000 of Arab heritage, the Census Bureau reported. According to the Arab American Institute Foundation, approximately 80,000 Americans of Arab descent live in Georgia, with around 50,000 living in Atlanta.
Michigan also has a large population of Arabs. Dearborn, Michigan’s Arab American population is the largest in the nation (110,000 residents) by density, according to the Associated Press, representing about 3 percent of the Wolverine State’s population. In 2020, Biden enjoyed a roughly 3-to-1 advantage in Dearborn.
“Even a small shift in the support in the community could have an incredibly large impact on the final outcome,” David Dulio, a political science professor at Michigan’s Oakland University, told the Hill. “It’s a small portion of the coalition, but it’s a critical one.”
“There’s double trouble that has to be addressed, both the ongoing situation in Gaza but also the now new circumstance created in Lebanon,” Jim Zogby, the founding director of the Arab American Institute, told the Hill. “I don’t know where Harris’s majority comes from if you’re losing a percentage of nonwhite voters, a percentage of young voters and a significant percentage of Arab American voters. I don’t know where you get the rest from.”
Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman (D), who is supporting Harris, believes the Harris campaign is doing a poor job of outreach.
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“The liaisons are doing their best, but they are not decisionmakers. But the concern right now is that decisionmakers are not engaging with the community directly,” he told the Hill. “Her team has been doing the outreach, and it’s been night and day compared to the Biden campaign. … But, if you’re a person who wants the bombs to stop and the candidate says, ‘Yes, I intend to stop the bombs,’ and that doesn’t happen, it makes you lose hope.”
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump has made a play for Arab voters. The Trump campaign has targeted ads geared toward the Arab communities, and Richard Grenell, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, and Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman, are working to build inroads with the community.
“His level of outreach has been constant and recurring, and the fact that there’s been this outreach placing value and worth in our community and saying that we deserve a seat at the table, which hasn’t happened from the other side,” said Samraa Luqman, a Democrat Michigan activist who now endorsed Trump, told the Hill.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.