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Bloc by Bloc: Five demographic trends to watch on Election Day
Well, here we are. After a punishingly long, mind-bogglingly expensive, and unusually unnerving US presidential campaign, Election Day is upon us.
Over the past few months, our Bloc by Bloc series took a look at some of the voting demographics that will likely play a key role in the outcome, so as we head down to the wire, here are five key takeaways to recap:
First, this election is very much about gender and perceptions of gender roles. In part, that’s because Kamala Harris is vying to become the first female president, running against an opponent who has been found liable for sexual assault against women in the past. But it’s also because of how each campaign frames its pitch and where each is seeking support.
The Trump campaign has leaned hard into winning the support of men, young men in particular, at times embracing a kind of hypermasculinity in its messaging – Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off at the RNC has become a signature moment. The Harris campaign, meanwhile, has sought to galvanize female voters, in particular by arguing that a second Trump presidency might further restrict women’s access to abortion and other reproductive health care, charges that Trump and his running mate JD Vance have recently sought to refute. In the latest polls, there is a 12-13 point gender gap between the two candidates. Read more here.
Second, key minority blocs look set to vote Republican at higher rates than in the recent past, with potentially decisive impacts in swing states. The Latino, Black, and Arab-American votes have been dependably Democratic for decades, and it is very unlikely that Trump will win any of these groups outright. But he could very well draw significantly more support than Republican candidates have in the past, as economic perceptions, culture war issues, and key concerns such as immigration or the war in Gaza scramble traditional voting patterns. Given the strong presence of these groups in key swing states such as Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia, even small shifts could have a big impact. For our look at the Black vote, see here. On the complex and shifting Latino vote (the largest minority voting bloc in the country), we took a look both before Biden stepped out and afterward. Our profile of a rapidly changing Arab-American vote in the shadow of Oct. 7 and Israel’s assault on Gaza is here.
Third, the partisan class divide is real – but with a caveat. Back in September, the historically Democrat-leaning Teamsters union decided not to endorse a candidate for the first time in decades. Why? At least partly because an internal poll showed the union’s rank and file breaking in favor of Trump, whose pledges to crack down on illegal immigration and stop import competition from abroad have been popular with this demographic. Given that the election could well turn on who wins more of the so-called “Rust Belt” – that is, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – the preferences of the working class could be decisive.
There is a caveat here, however: Among white working-class voters, Trump leads by roughly 30 points, but among non-white working-class voters, the reverse is true (most non-white working-class folks are Black and Latino). Read more about the class divide here.
Fourth, for all the attention on the youth vote, the senior circuit could be decisive. In 2020, Joe Biden managed to turn the senior vote blue for the first time in decades – whether Harris will be able to continue that trend could be decisive. For all the focus of both candidates on youth voters, the senior vote – which typically shows high turnout and relatively conservative leanings – is worth watching. The latest polls show a more or less dead heat between the two candidates among voters aged 65 and older. For more on the youth and senior votes, see here.
Fifth, take the idea of “voting blocs” with a grain of sense. These categories – Black, Hispanic, Working class, Women, Men, Young, Old – are, of course, huge oversimplifications of the preferences and experiences of tens of millions of individual people. For the purposes of analysis and polling, this is useful, but as you think about the election, it goes without saying that it’s important to remember that each person will ultimately cast their vote for reasons that are important to them, not to some group identity assigned to them by a pollster, census worker, campaign strategist, media executive, or political analyst. This may seem like an obvious point, but it’s worth remembering, particularly as you try to understand, after the fact, why either candidate won or lost.
Pro-Palestinian protesters rally for a cease-fire in Gaza during the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in Dearborn, Michigan, on May 19, 2024.
Bloc by Bloc: The Arab-American vote in the shadow of Oct. 7
This GZERO 2024 election series looks at America’s changing voting patterns, bloc by bloc.
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In 2019, Mohamed S, an Egyptian-born investment consultant who had lived in New York for more than 20 years, finally decided to apply for US citizenship, for one reason:
“I wanted to vote against Donald Trump.”
But the pandemic delayed his naturalization until after the election. Next month will be the 47-year-old’s first chance to vote in a US presidential race. But this time, Mohamed says, he’s not going to cast a ballot at all.
Mohamed, who asked that we not use his last name over concerns his views might affect his business, said that while he still opposes Trump, the Biden administration’s Gaza policy has made it impossible for him to support a Democrat this fall.
“Why would I vote for a person who has provided weapons and funding that have been used to kill children who look exactly like my son, speak the same language as my son?” Mohamed asks. “That’s an outrageous thing to expect me to do.”
Mohamed’s views echo wider shifts in the Arab American community in the year since Hamas’ murderous rampage through southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, provoked an Israeli response that has killed at least 40,000 people in Gaza and displaced nearly 2 million, according to local authorities. Israel has faced charges of genocide in international courts.
A small community with big electoral power
About 4 million people in the United States identify as Arab Americans. They are a community of diverse faiths, national origins, and viewpoints. Roughly two-thirds are Christian, and one-third are Muslim. They have a large presence in key swing states like Michigan, comprising about 5% of the electorate there, and Pennsylvania, where they make up about 2%.
The war in Gaza looms large for them. More than 80% in a recent poll by the Arab American Institute, an advocacy group, said it’s their top election issue.
That marks the first time that any conflict in the Middle East has topped the list of concerns among Arab Americans, says AAI chairman James Zogby.
“It’s a genocide. And the administration’s response has been abysmal,” says Zogby, “not just in its full-throated support for Israel, but in its failure to put any restraint on Israel.”
Democrats are now paying the price
For decades, Arab Americans were a reliably blue voting bloc. Only about a third of the community ever voted Republican. In 2020, Biden got 59% of the Arab American vote against Trump’s 30%.
But the AAI poll, taken in early October, showed Trump edging out Harris 42% to 41% among Arab American voters — a 12-point swing in Trump’s favor. Expected turnout, meanwhile, has fallen from a historical average of 80% to around 60%.
Given that Biden won Michigan by less than three points in 2020, and Pennsylvania by just over one point, Arab American voters’ choices – not only about whom to vote for but whether to vote at all — could shape the outcome in November. At the moment, Harris leads Trump by roughly one point in both states.
Feeling ignored at a fraught moment
Zogby says weak outreach from the Democrat camp has hurt Harris. The Democrats’ rejection of calls for a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic National Convention stung, and the failure to hold high-level meetings with Arab American leaders — as opposed to lumping them in as part of a broader outreach to Muslim Americans — has made the community feel marginalized at a painful time.
“I’d love for her to call for a cease-fire, of course, but if she just got up and gave a speech in Michigan and said, ‘I want your support, I know we have differences, but I know we can talk them through, it would make a difference,” says Zogby.
Some Arab American voters are going further than simply staying home on Election Day.
“Six months ago, I was a Democrat,” says Bishara Bahbah, a Jerusalem-born, Harvard-trained academic and journalist. Now he is the founder of Arab Americans for Trump.
“I came to the conclusion that not only do I not want to vote for Biden or Harris, I want to actually punish them,” says Bahbah, a Palestinian Christian who grew up in East Jerusalem and now lives in Arizona.
Financed by Bahbah himself, Arab Americans for Trump has been coordinating events with Massad Boulos, the Lebanese-born businessman and father-in-law to Trump’s daughter Tiffany, as well as former Ambassador Richard Grenell, who was Trump’s acting director of national intelligence. Bahbah has met with Trump directly at least once, he says.
The Trump campaign has sought to expand its small base of Arab American support with pledges to cut taxes, crack down on undocumented immigration, and defend traditional views on gender, which plays well in many socially conservative Arab households.
A recent endorsement by Amer Ghalib, the Yemen-born mayor of Hamtramck, a Detroit suburb and the only US city with an all-Muslim local government, has helped the Trump effort.
Bahbah dismisses concerns about Trump’s history of strongly pro-Israel policies and his recent pledge to bring the US “closer [to Israel] than it’s ever been.”
“The difference is the Democratic camp has blood on their hands,” says Bahbah, who says he lost three relatives in an Israeli airstrike on an ancient church in Gaza last October. “President Trump does not.”
Bahbah is confident that Trump, without reelection to worry about, would make a push for a two-state solution after all.
“I think he is interested in leaving a legacy of a peacemaker.”
Not everyone who has soured on the Democrats shares that optimism about Trump.
“I’m not naive enough to believe that Trump would be better,” says Mohamed, the New York-based consultant. “I just don’t see a scenario in which Kamala Harris wins and things change in Gaza.”
But Zogby still sees more opportunity with a Democrat in the White House than not.
“There’s a coalition that exists in the Senate around Palestinian rights,” he says. “I would rather be fighting alongside them with a Democratic president than with a Republican president or a Republican Congress that wouldn’t give a shit at all.”
“People tell me it can’t be worse,” he says, “but it can always be worse.”
Biden and Trudeau face headwinds … from Gaza
Last Thursday, after Joe Biden promised during his State of the Union to build a pier to deliver aid to Gaza, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet shook the president’s hand, congratulated him on the speech, and urged him to push Israel to do more on “humanitarian stuff.”
Biden, caught on a hot mic, nodded in agreement and said he was pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I told him, Bibi, don’t repeat this, but we are going to have a come-to-Jesus meeting.”
The next day, in the multicultural Toronto suburb of Mississauga, Justin Trudeau's International Development Minister Ahmed Hussenannounced that Canada would resume funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Israel has alleged that 12 employees were involved in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, leading most Western countries to withdraw aid.
Unhappy progressives
Both Biden and Trudeau are responding to pressure to shift their positions on the war in Gaza, which has rattled their electoral coalitions, posing serious challenges for them as they head toward elections in November in the United States and 2025 in Canada.
The White House is aware of the problem. Biden’s aides have had to take steps to avoid pro-Palestinian protests, booking him into smaller venues and holding back event details until the last minute to keep protesters from being able to disrupt him. That is making it hard for him to get his message about student loan relief out on university campuses.
The horrible death toll in Gaza, where thousands of civilians have been killed since October, has led to despair and anger among progressives, not just among people with roots in the Middle East, but among young people and people of color.
There has been a significant generational shift in public opinion. A December New York Times poll found 46% of 18-to-19-year-olds are more sympathetic to Palestinians, compared to 27% who are sympathetic to Israel.
“I tell people all the time, 50 years ago when we had a demonstration from the White House it would be 50 people, all of whom had an Arabic accent, and today it’s tens of thousands of people, and it's a group as diverse as America that's showing up,” says James J. Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute.
Michigan in the balance
In February’s Democratic presidential primary in Michigan, 13% of voters chose “uncommitted,” sparking similar protest movements in other states, a way for progressives to signal their unhappiness with Biden’s support for Israel in the Gaza war. But unlike the other states, Michigan, home to about 500,000 Arab Americans, is vital if Biden hopes to stay in the White House.
“Michigan had a huge impact because it is difficult to come up with a map where Democrats win the White House without Michigan in the mix, and the percentage of Arab voters in Michigan is high enough to make the difference,” says Zogby.
While the fear isn’t that these voters would flip sides for Donald Trump, the threat is real, says Clayton Allen, US director for the Eurasia Group. “Michigan is a great example where if you see the decline in Arab-American support hold through the election, that would be enough votes — if they would not show up to vote … — that would be enough to erase what had been his margin of victory in 2020.”
Nobody on Trudeau’s side
The situation in Canada is similar. Progressives are so frustrated with the Trudeau government’s position on the war that urban areas once considered safe for the Liberals may now be out of reach for the party.
Trudeau’s fence-sitting on the Gaza war has not endeared him to pro-Israel voters either.
“The Liberal Party has lost, largely, both communities, because they’ve tried to have it both ways,” says pollster Quito Maggi, of Mainstreet Research.
“For electoral purposes, it’s not really great to have nobody on your side,” says one Liberal organizer.
The Liberals have been behind in the polls for so long that some would like to replace Trudeau before the election, but a leadership race while the war continues could be dominated by arguments over Gaza, potentially damaging the party.
The war is not causing similar problems for conservatives in either country, because their coalitions don’t include progressives who are angered by the bombing. They can sit back and watch as their progressive opponents struggle to keep their coalitions together.
Both Biden and Trudeau appear to be in no-win positions. They are angering their progressive bases but would anger other constituencies if they move too far the other way.
“Outside of that young progressive block, most US voters, in total, support US military backing of Israel,” says Allen. “So Biden does bear a risk if he skews too hard to the left. Everyone else can attack him for abandoning Israel. I think that's been one of the limiting factors. It's why we see Biden try to walk this tightrope.”
Both leaders would benefit from bringing the temperature down, which will only happen after the bombs stop falling on Gaza. Few outside Canada have much reason to be greatly concerned about Trudeau’s position, but the United States provides $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel every year, which gives Biden leverage over Netanyahu.
He may need to use it soon to give himself time to win back the progressives whose votes he needs to keep Trump out of the White House.