The Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, led the US vice president and candidate of the Democratic party, Kamala Harris, by a slim margin among Arab Americans, according to a new poll conducted by Arab News/YouGov and released Monday.
This move raises the possibility that the war in Gaza is eroding Democrats’ support among a key constituency in a key battleground state. With two weeks left before voters choose the next U.S. president, Trump leads Harris by 45 percent to 43 percent.
Trump is viewed as six points more favourable to Israel’s present government than Harris, despite his edge. Based on a survey of 500 Arab Americans, the poll’s findings are within a 5.93 percent margin of error.
According to a study conducted earlier this month by the Arab American Institute, Trump and Harris were nearly tied at 42 percent to 41 percent. Interestingly, Biden’s support among Arab Americans in 2020 was 18 points higher than Harris’s.
Arab American voters are regarded as crucial to Harris’s electoral prospects due to their significant presence in Michigan, one of the seven swing states likely to determine the election outcome. Michigan hosts the largest concentration of Arab Americans in North America and is home to Dearborn, the first Arab-majority city in the U.S.
In September, the mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, the first U.S. city with an all-Muslim government endorsed Trump, describing him as a “man of principles” and “the right choice.” Biden won Michigan by approximately 150,000 votes in 2020, while Trump carried the state by a mere 11,000 votes in 2016.
In a direct appeal to Muslim and Arab American voters on Monday, Trump criticised Harris for campaigning alongside former Republican Congresswoman, Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, in key states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
“If Kamala gets four more years, the Middle East will spend the next four decades going up in flames, and your kids will be going off to war, maybe even a Third World War, something that will never happen with President Donald J. Trump in charge,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “For our country’s sake, and for your kids, Vote Trump for PEACE!”
Trump has positioned himself as the most pro-Israel U.S. leader in history, claiming that Israel will vanish if he is not reelected, despite his outreach to Muslim voters.
Aljazeera
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