Part of the Series
Communities Beyond Elections
As expected, the Democratic presidential ticket got a boost in support from the nation’s 2.5 million registered Muslim voters after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. However, more than a third are still planning to vote for a third-party candidate after the Democratic National Convention (DNC) left simmering anger over U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza largely unaddressed.
Up to 69 percent of registered Muslims report voting primarily for the Democratic Party, but third-party presidential candidates who oppose sending weapons to Israel have roughly cut that majority in half, according to two national surveys released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Thursday.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are virtually tied, with about 29 percent of Muslims planning to vote for each candidate, according to a survey of 1,159 voters conducted shortly after the DNC. Another 4 percent plan to vote for Cornel West, the unaffiliated antiwar candidate who is still fighting to be on the ballot in multiple states.
Just over 11 percent plan to vote for Republican Donald Trump, and 16 percent remain undecided. Only 8 percent said they are not planning to vote in November.
“This is showing that Muslim voters who traditionally in the last election voted over 60 percent for Biden, that 60 percent has evenly split now between two candidates who have two very different messages that are addressing their concerns,” said Robert McCaw, CAIR’s director of government affairs, during a press conference Thursday.
The contrast between Stein and Harris is clear. Stein, a Jewish anti-Zionist, is urging voters to “abandon pro-genocide candidates” and was arrested during a police crackdown on a Palestine solidarity protest at Washington University in St. Louis earlier this year. Harris works directly under Biden, the top architect of U.S. policy on Gaza, where an Israeli assault and siege has left more than 40,600 people dead despite months of U.S.-led negotiations over a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
While Harris has attempted to speak on Gaza with more compassion than Biden, the DNC and the protests raging outside came and went without signaling any shift in White House policy around arming Israel.
Harris briefly acknowledged the intense suffering in Gaza and called for Palestinian “self-determination” during her nomination speech at the DNC in Chicago last week. Meanwhile, thousands of people marched past the DNC demanding an end to U.S. support for Israel and accusing the Biden administration of complicity in genocide.
As Harris spoke, Uncommitted delegates and Palestinian Democrats staged a sit-in outside the DNC after officials refused to allow a Palestinian speaker on the main stage, despite giving families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas a prime-time slot. Polling suggests that up to 75 percent of Democrats now oppose Israel’s war on Gaza and sympathize with Palestinians in much larger numbers than in the past, and refusing to allow a Palestinian to speak at the DNC was broadly seen as an unforced error.
However, there has been a major shift toward Harris among Muslim voters since Biden dropped out the race last month. A CAIR survey of 2,850 Muslim voters conducted while Biden was still running in late May and July found that nearly 60 percent planned to vote for a third-party candidate, with 36 percent supporting Stein and 25 percent supporting West. At the time, 94 percent disapproved of Biden’s overall job performance, and 95 percent disapproved of Congress’s job performance.
McCaw said the percentage of Muslims who say they plan to vote in November increased by 10 points after Biden left the race.
“[Biden] dropping out increased the chances of success for the Democratic Party, at least within the Muslim community,” McCaw said.
While the poll shows substantial improvement for Democrats since July, McCaw said Muslim voters remain “deeply dissatisfied” with the state of the nation — and especially with U.S. foreign policy on Israel and Palestine, which ranks as the top issue motivating Muslim voters this election cycle. The Muslim community is very diverse, and the polling shows serious concern for the human rights of Muslims all over the world, including the ethnic minorities facing violence and oppression in India, China and Burma.
In fact, 64 percent of Muslims surveyed by CAIR in May and July said they “strongly disagree” with claims that the U.S. government “promotes human rights and justice globally.” Only 1 percent felt that they “strongly agree.” International human rights is the top issue motivating Muslim voters, followed by religious freedom and health care access.
The unprecedented support for third-party candidates is still a major concern for Democrats attempting to woo Muslim voters in crucial swing states, particularly Michigan, where the state’s large Arab and Muslim population turned out in large numbers to cast protest votes against Biden in the Democratic primary. With nearly 250,000 Muslim residents, even low turnout among voters could swing the state in Trump’s direction.
McCaw said life in the U.S. has changed for many Muslims since Israel’s war on Gaza began. In its annual civil rights report, CAIR details 8,000 incidents of anti-Muslim hate and bias that were submitted by individuals across the country in 2023, including reports of discrimination in employment, education and the immigration system. Since the October 7 attacks sparked Israel’s revenge campaign in Gaza, CAIR received hundreds of reports from Muslim students who say they faced intimidation or arrest colleges campuses as protests erupted in recent months, according to McCaw.
The anger, grief and frustration among Muslim voters is visible in the poll numbers, and third-party candidates are primed to take advantage. However, a plurality of Muslim voters (40 percent) identify is “moderate” politically, while nearly 30 percent identify as “conservative” and 19 percent identify as “liberal,” according to the CAIR survey. The broad support for Stein, a left-wing candidate who is often seen as a spoiler by Democrats, is not set in stone.
Gaza is the top priority for Muslim voters heading into November, and they were clearly responsive to Biden’s decision to drop out of the race. Harris acknowledged the suffering in Gaza and saw her support among Muslims swell in the days afterward, but in an interview this week, she signaled that she is not open to withholding weapons from Israel. Whether she can win back Muslim voters without a change in policy remains to be seen.
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