A Zogby poll released on Tuesday shows President Trump leading Joe Biden 40 percent to 17 percent among Arab Americans as support for for Biden and the Democratic Party has collapsed in response to Biden’s support for Israel following the Hamas terror attack on October 7 that saw Palestinians from neighboring Gaza kill 1,400 and take over 200 hostages. Thirty-three Americans were killed and “less than ten” are being held hostage according to the White House. In addition, hundreds of Palestinian-Americans in Gaza are not being allowed by Hamas to leave.
Biden has brought war and chaos to the Middle East, in sharp contrast to Trump’s record of peace established with the crushing of the ISIS caliphate and the Abraham Accords. Domestically, Biden’s economy pales in comparison to Trump’s economic record.
The Zogby poll shows that where Biden in 2020 had majority support among Arab Americans at 59 percent, that support has collapsed to just 17 percent saying they will vote for Biden in 2024 since the October 7 Hamas attack. Biden was already down to 35 percent in the months before the poll. Trump’s support has increased among Arab Americans from 35 to 40 percent according to a Reuters report on the Zogby poll (excerpt):
President Joe Biden’s support among Arab Americans, who are crucial voters in battleground election states, has plunged from a comfortable majority in 2020 to just 17%, a new poll shows, amid growing anger over the Democratic president’s support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
Arab American support for Biden, at 59% in 2020, fell even before the outbreak of violence in the Middle East to 35%, the poll commissioned by the Arab American Institute showed, but has halved since.
The poll, released Tuesday, marks the first time since its inception in 1997 that a majority of Arab Americans did not identify as Democrats – 32% now identify as Republicans and 31% as independents. Forty percent of those polled said they would vote for former President Donald Trump, the likely Republican candidate in 2024, up 5 percentage points from 2020.
…The poll was conducted by John Zogby Strategies of 500 Arab Americans with some answering online only. The poll has a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.
More in depth reporting on the Zogby poll results by Reuters at this link.
Time magazine observes the collapse in support for Biden by Arab Americans could tip the balance in key swing states in a 2024 rematch against President Trump (excerpt):
…The first national poll of Arab Americans since the war in Gaza began shows how deep that sense of betrayal goes, with only 17% of Arab American voters saying they will vote for Biden in 2024—a staggering drop from 59% in 2020.
This is the most dramatic shift over the shortest period of time that I’ve ever seen,” James Zogby, the founder and president of the Arab American Institute, which released the poll on Tuesday, tells TIME.
…The poll results are likely to increase concerns among Democrats about Biden’s standing with Arab Americans heading into 2024, particularly in Michigan, where roughly 277,000 Arab Americans call home, and Biden won in 2020 by 155,000 votes. But the smaller Arab American populations in Pennsylvania and Georgia were also larger than Biden’s margins of victory there. All three states are ones Biden flipped after Trump won them in 2016.
Although the roughly 3 million Arab Americans residing in the U.S. today are hardly a monolith, more than half of them voted for Biden in 2020. In places such as Dearborn, Michigan, which boasts one of the largest Arab American populations in the country, the overwhelming majority did so. Arab American community leaders and activists tell TIME that this wasn’t because they had any illusions about Biden’s pro-Israel stance. Rather, it was because they believed that he would be better than Trump, whose xenophobic and Islamophoblic (sic) policies disproportionately affected the Arab American community.
…Efforts by the White House to repair the relationship through meetings with Arab and Muslim American leaders appear to have borne little fruit thus far, according to The Washington Post, with one such meeting being described by one of its attendees as “a sh*t show.”
There were complaints among some in the Arab American community in Michigan that Democrat officials attended a pro-Israel rally after the October 7 Hamas terror attack but none showed at a pro-Palestinian rally.
AP | Many top Michigan Democrats took part in a huge pro-Israel rally near Detroit after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on the country. None attended a rally in nearby Dearborn the next day to show support for Palestinians in Gaza.https://t.co/ZlDSvhALau
— Michigan Radio (@MichiganRadio) October 26, 2023
Apparently not even ‘Hamas squad’ member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) showed for this Dearborn pro-Hamas rally:
“Hamas is not a terrorist organization!” Four 4 days after Hamas’ massacre of 1,400 Israelis, Palestinian influencer @AmerZahr hosted this pro-Hamas rally at Dearborn, Michigan, where hundreds cheered openly celebrating the horrific murder, rape, torture & kidnapping of Jews.… pic.twitter.com/VOlj5Ryh2E
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) October 25, 2023
Dearborn high school students pro-Hamas protest earlier this month:
Thousands of students walked out of Dearborn high schools Friday to stage a pro-Hamas protest, some reportedly chanting “Allahu Akbar.”
Here, they chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”: pic.twitter.com/RbQMx99RmQ
— The Midwesterner (@Th_Midwesterner) October 20, 2023