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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.”
Ian Bremmer on Trump's guilty verdict
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take on another historic day for the US political system.
Donald Trump, former president, running for president, guilty from a jury of his peers on all 34 charges in this New York case. It is an extraordinary day. The United States has never in history had an American president convicted of a felony before. There are, of course, lots of unprecedented things that happen in the US political system, right now. Trump's dual impeachments, both of which led to acquittals, the challenges of the Supreme Court, the speaker of the House, I mean, you name it right now, January 6th, America's doing it. And this is, should not be normalized. And yet, American citizens increasingly come to expect the unexpected from their political system.
This case is, the structurally weakest in the sense it's the least significant crimes that he has been accused of, that he's been indicted for, across the country. We look at, the cases of the mishandling and lying about classified information or, the Georgia efforts to overturn the election or, of course, the January 6th related cases. Those are much more serious in terms of impact on the US political system and the role of Donald Trump as president. But this is the case, that has moved the fastest. And this is the case that has now returned the convictions.
Let's look at the case itself for a moment. The verdict and even the potential jail time that comes from it will have no impact on Trump's ability to run for or to serve as president, should he win. Though it's also true that he cannot pardon himself because they're state charges. They aren't federal charges. So, if he wins, he's still a convicted felon, but he's also president again. And yes, he can still vote. Everyone saying no, he can't vote because Florida says felons can't vote. Yes, but that's if the felony is in Florida. If the felony is someplace else, in New York, and he's not actually in jail, then Florida has a type of reciprocity so that he, that the rules of New York apply, so he can vote for himself. And I'm sure he's going to.
On the legal front, the implications for Trump are pretty small. Prison time is pretty unlikely. Even if they're imposed, they'd be very short. Fines will be small, and Trump is also almost certainly going to appeal this guilty verdict through the New York court system and potentially eventually to the Supreme Court, which is going to take months. that you don't necessarily have given the upcoming election. And during that time, sentencing is likely to be postponed. And the focus of the appeal is going to be on the decision of the prosecution, which was quite controversial and seen to be politicized, to upgrade the charges from misdemeanors to felonies based on the legal theory that the fraud that Trump committed, were attempted violations of a federal law. So, that's the case itself.
What about the election? Does it now make it less likely that Trump wins? Maybe. I might even say probably, but only a little. First point, we are still six months away from this election. That is a very long time. The entire UK election is like six weeks from when they declare it to when it happens. The United States and all of America's collective wisdom, the most expensive, the biggest spectacle, and this is going on and on and on. And I suspect that a lot of what's happening today will feel like history by the time we actually get to November. Now, having said that, independents have consistently said over the past months that they will be less likely to vote for Trump if he is convicted. A lot of them say that, and there are a lot of independents. Fewer people are actually registered as Republicans or Democrats in today's United States. The GOP is very likely to continue to vote for him. In fact, many, I think, will be more strong in their conviction to support Trump because they feel that this is a witch hunt. Now, I do think that there are centrist Republicans that are not comfortable with a lot of who Trump is, but because pretty much every leader of the Republican Party, the governors, the senators, the members of the House, have all lined up behind Trump with loyalty, his coattail effect is probably going to be significant to the voters.
And, you know, Nikki Haley, who continues to poll about like 20%, even though she's already withdrawn, she has come out and said, “I'm supporting Trump. I can't support Biden, I got to support Trump.” Why? Because, she wants to be secretary of state, and her personal ambition matters a lot more to her than whether or not she sees Trump as unfit. And the impact that that's going to have on the election in Trump's favor, I think, is significant. I think she was in a position to make a difference. And she did, for herself. And that is part of the reason why US democracy is in crisis, is because so many political leaders for so long have been making decisions just like that. And that's not just the Republicans. That's the Democrats, too.
Now, I still think Trump can absolutely win again. This is a close race. It's going to be decided in a small number of states. Most Americans have said that what matters to them is not the state of American democracy. What matters to them is abortion, and immigration, and the economy, and inflation. And I suspect that that is still going to be true two months from now, four months from now, six months from now. And that, you know, as much as people were up in arms about the “stop the steal” movement, after January 6th, or as much as they were up in arms about the Access Hollywood tapes when Trump was running against Hillary Clinton, they quickly forgot about it. And I suspect that, you know, this is more significant, but still, ultimately, most Americans are going to continue to vote for what they say has been most important to them. And that's not the state of American democracy.
Again, a big reason why US democracy is in crisis. But perhaps the most important point here is justice needs to be done in the United States. It also needs to be seen to be done. And in the US today, the level of division, the level of mistrust, the level of suspicion among America and citizens means that almost every Trump supporter believes that justice has not been done, that this was a witch hunt, that this was trumped up charges and fake, driven by President Biden himself, to ensure that Trump cannot be president again. That is certainly the belief of a large number of Trump supporters and Trump and his advisers and his campaign, leaders will do everything they can to promote that narrative. And that is incredibly dangerous for a democracy. That is an indication that US democracy is in deep crisis in a way that is much, much more structurally challenging than in any other advanced democracy today. You could not say that about Canada, or Japan, or the United Kingdom, or Germany, or even France, or Italy. It is the United States uniquely among wealthy democracies, that has a political system that large numbers of its people, its own citizens, no longer believe in and don't know what it stands for, don't think it's legitimate.
And that, with two deeply unpopular candidates who stand for radically different visions of the world and the United States is a very, very dangerous place to be. And I think that whoever you're rooting for, whoever you're voting for, the strength of the US political system today is in question. And around the world, those of you that are watching this that aren't Americans, you know, your views of the United States, your willingness to believe in the US and believe in the commitments that the Americans make over time, are being deeply challenged, are being shaken by what you see in the US today, and what you're going to see over the coming months.
I certainly hope that we don't see significant political violence on the back of this, though I think it's certainly possible, and the likelihood of that as the election gets closer is growing. And I certainly hope that the United States is able to run a free and fair election, but it also has to be seen to be free and fair. And there, I don't think that is likely at all, come November. And as an American who considers himself a patriot and believes in my country, I'm deeply concerned and saddened about that. That's not going to make me stop working. It's not going to quiet my voice. It's not going to reduce what I'm saying to all of you out there. But I have to be honest about what I see, and that's where we are.
So, anyway, some thoughts for today. I hope everyone's well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Trump has been found guilty. Will voters care?
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
Donald Trump is the first presidential candidate in American history to be convicted of a crime. What does this mean for his campaign? Well honestly, probably not all that much. Voters have shown no indication they care about this trial at all so far, instead focusing on issues like the economy, immigration, senior services, crime, but not really Trump's trials. That could change through the course of the campaign.
And ironically now that Trump is out of the courtroom and free to campaign again, President Biden will be able to draw more attention to the things that voters don't like about Trump, such as efforts to overturn the 2020 elections. This campaign still has a lot of time left to run however, and there's a lot that can go wrong for either candidate. Trump has leads and all the critical polls for now but as he hits the campaign trail throughout the summer, and as Joe Biden continues to try to define him that lead could slip. But probably this guilty verdict will just be added to the long list of unconventional things that Trump has done throughout the years that voters also don't like, and somehow they continue to grow to be comfortable with him - and his lead in the polls is unlikely to slip from where it is today. Stay tuned for more of what we're watching in US politics next week.
Was CNN's Town Hall with Trump a mistake?
"The media is not the enemy. The media is the people. And yet that messaging's gone so awry." Media journalist and former CNN host Brian Stelter expresses such a basic thought in the latest episode of GZERO World, and yet it's one about which so many Americans disagree. Stelter joined media historian Nicole Hemmer for a special panel interview on the current state of our hyper-fragmented media landscape and to look ahead at how news outlets can recapture voters' trust ahead of the 2023 election.
A big part of that mission, says Stelter, is to do more listening. "We need to hear so much more from voters and, frankly, so much less from these politicians that are pandering to them."
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: "Politics, trust & the media in the age of misinformation"
Watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
How Democrats used GOP wins against them
It's going to be a red wave! No, a tsunami!
Nope. In the end, Republicans hoping for a wipeout in the US midterms barely won the House and Democrats kept the Senate.
Why? Turns out voters cared a lot about protecting two things: democracy and abortion, Ian Bremmer explains on GZERO World.
One big exception to the GOP's bad night: Gov. Ron DeSantis’ trouncing victory in Florida.
Watch the GZERO World episode: US democracy after US midterms: polarized voters & Trump's GOP
Reading the US midterm election tea leaves
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.
What is polling telling us three weeks before the midterm elections?
Public opinion polling is taking election watchers on quite an exciting ride this year, from showing Republicans with a massive advantage early in the year, to demonstrating a surge and support for Democrats over the summer. Most election watchers think that surge is fading now in the final weeks before the election. But today, we wanted to focus on a few numbers that matter for forecasting the election results.
But first is the generic congressional ballot, which asks voters which party they would prefer to vote for in an upcoming election. If you have to look at one indicator to make a forecast about congressional elections in the US, this is it. Particularly in the House of Representatives. This indicator has shown Republicans with an unusual advantage for most of this year, which they lost over the summer as abortion climbed in importance for voters. While Democrats lead in this indicator right now by about half a percentage point, because of the way districts are drawn, they would need to have a several-point lead in order to be thought of as favorites in taking the House. So this is telling us that the general environment is good for Republicans at the moment.
The second data point to watch is presidential approval. This is far more important in presidential elections than midterm elections, but it does give an indicator of how voters feel about the party in power. In this case, the Democrats. Biden's approval has trended steadily downwards since his inauguration, going from a high of 54% in January of last year, to a low of 37% in July of this year. But he's staged a bit of a comeback as energy price increases reversed over the summer. Biden currently sits at about 43% if you average together different polls, which is almost exactly where President Trump was before he faced a major setback in his first midterm election, and about four points behind where President Obama was just before the Tea Party wave that cost Democrats control of the House in 2010. So this suggests an advantage for Republicans, to the extent this election is a referendum on Biden.
Then the final thing you want to look at is issue polling. And what's interesting about this election cycle is that Republicans and Democrats are saying they prioritize very different things. Republicans are saying that inflation, crime, and immigration, are their top concerns. And coincidentally, those are all areas where polls indicate that voters trust Republicans more than Democrats to handle these issues. And at the same time, Democrats are telling pollsters that healthcare, abortion, and gun policy, are top issues in this election, and Democrats tend to have a lead in who would handle those issues better. So this is really a mixed picture of who has the advantage in the national environment.
But perhaps most importantly, the top issue for independent voters is the economy and inflation, where Republicans have the overall advantage. So if this were a national referendum, the data tells us that you'd have to favor the Republicans, but of course, it isn't. And while control of the House is affected by national trends, the Senate tends to be much more idiosyncratic, and the outcomes will vary on candidate quality. And of course, we have to be cautious when looking at polls given the sizable misses in catching Republican voters in the last several election cycles.
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Have Republicans ruined their chances of taking the Senate?
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.
Have Republicans ruined their chances of taking the Senate?
2022 started off looking like a very strong year for Republicans who are trying to retake the House and Senate. With inflation top of mind for voters and several Republican candidates in 2021 riding the backlash against COVID lockdowns and teachers' unions, Republicans had solid leads in congressional polling and the winds of history at their back. The president's party typically loses about 30 House seats in a normal midterm elections, and Democrats only had five to give away before they lost their majority. And in an evenly divided Senate, Republicans saw at least four easy pickup opportunities in swing states that Democrats barely won in previous cycles.
But the environment has shifted radically in the last several months. Inflation remains a top issue, but has abated slightly in recent months as energy prices have dropped. The Supreme Court's decision, overturning Roe vs. Wade seems to have increased registration and enthusiasm among Democratic voters, particularly women and President Donald Trump is back in the news because of the sensational raid on his Mar-a-Lago compound hurting Republicans.
In addition to these atmospherics, Republican Senate candidates are drastically underperforming in several key races. GOP candidates in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada are underperforming a generic Republican in those states. And this week, New Hampshire Republicans nominated an extremely controversial former general who polls far behind the Democratic incumbent, despite the favorable national environment. This has led several mainstream election forecasters to believe that Democrats are now favored to hold the Senate or potentially even increase the size of their majority based on competitive candidates for Republican seats running in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina. This probably won't happen, but this is not the campaign that Republican leaders thought they would be running in the spring.
What could change the dynamics back in Republicans' favor? Most likely it's the economy. The Federal Reserve is aggressively hiking interest rates to bring down inflation. And while that hasn't slowed down job creation just yet, it could start to have a bite in the real economy in the next several months. And of course, campaigns matter too. The Republican candidate in Pennsylvania has just started to spend money to define his Democratic opponent as too liberal for the state. The race in Georgia remains very close. And in Nevada, Republicans are running a Senator's son who has already won statewide. If you live in one of these states, watch out for a flood of ads in the next six weeks as both parties prepare to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to keep or take control of the policy agenda.
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What you should know about Elise Stefanik’s rise in the GOP
Get insights on the latest news in US politics from Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington:
Who is Elise Stefanik and what does she mean for the Republican Party right now?
Elise Stefanik is a young member from Upstate New York. She had originally started her career as a staffer in the George W. Bush administration, but in recent years, has turned into one of the most outspoken defenders of President Donald Trump, particularly during the impeachment trial last year. She's relevant right now because it looks like she'll be replacing Liz Cheney, the Representative from Wyoming and also the daughter of the former Vice President, who has been outspoken in her criticism of President Trump since the January 6th insurrection, and probably more importantly, outspoken in her criticism of the direction of the Republican Party.
The irony here though, is that while Cheney is going down, she's being replaced by somebody who, when she came into office, was expected to be a pretty standard-bearing Bush Republican. And so this is just really indicative of where the Party is, very hard to stay on in Republican leadership if you aren't going to be a supporter of President Trump. Too many of Cheney's colleagues thought she had become a distraction and wanted her gone. Stefanik is probably a placeholder. She says she doesn't want to serve in the position long-term. She eventually wants to take over the chairmanship of a committee, and she has many years ahead of her in Congress. She is very young.
What's the outlook for the Democrats' election bill?
Well, the Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced a bill to rewrite federal election law. Traditionally, election laws have been set by the state. States are allowed to choose how to do their redistricting. They're allowed to choose how people vote. Do they do mail-in votes? Do they have no-excuse mail-in votes? How many days of early voting are they going to allow? And, the Democrats bill would append that entire regime, and create a federal standard that every state would have to meet for number of days of pre-election day, in-person voting, standards around absentee voting, how to draw districts, taking it away from partisan gerrymandering and moving it towards a commission, in most states. And, there's been a lot of opposition to it. So the Democrats argue that this bill is necessary because Republicans are passing what they think are restrictive voting laws across the country. And Republicans are saying the Democrats are trying to take over and federalize elections to increase the chances that they win future elections and hold onto their current majorities in the House and Senate. And there's truth to both claims. The bill is very unlikely to move anywhere. It has 49 Democratic Senators who support it, who are co-sponsors, and one Democratic holdout, Joe Manchin. But even if Manchin never came around and said he supported the bill, it would require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, or the elimination of the legislative filibuster, so it's very unlikely to pass into law. You know this is a really big deal for the Democrats. They've given it the special designation S.1 in the Senate, H.R.1 in the House, which is a symbolic act suggesting this is their highest priority. But also, in a Rules Committee hearing earlier this week, both Majority Leader, Schumer, and Republican Minority Leader, McConnell, showed up to debate the bill in-person, debate amendments, and there've been multiple showdowns on the Floor. This is a really high-stakes piece of legislation. It would fundamentally tip the balance of power in favor of the Democrats were it to pass, which is, among other reasons, why Republicans are so opposed to seeing it get into law.
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