LONDON: Jill Stein, the US Green Party presidential candidate known for her outspoken support for Palestinian rights, has emerged as the top choice among Arab-American voters ahead of the November 5 US elections, according to a recent poll.
Stein, a third-party candidate, won the support of more than 45 percent of Arab Americans polled by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the largest Arab-American civil rights organization.
That puts Stein, a doctor and environmentalist, ahead of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, who received 27.5 percent of the vote in the same poll.
The survey was conducted between July 27 and 28 through a partnership between the ADC, Molitico for data analysis, and Community Pulse, which specializes in survey solutions.
According to Abed Ayoub, ADC's national executive director, the Arab-American electorate has increasingly turned toward Stein because of her commitment to Palestinian human rights and her opposition to the Israeli military's actions in Gaza since October.
In a post on social media platform X, he said: “Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein’s strong poll support at 45.3%, similar to the previous poll, demonstrates continued community support, largely due to her outspoken stance on Palestinian human rights.”
Stein has been the frontrunner among Arab voters since the last ADC opinion poll in May, where she led with 25 percent support. By comparison, President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race in July, and Republican nominee Donald Trump, got 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively.
In 2022, 2.2 million people in the United States reported having Arab ancestry in that year's Arab Community Survey. Most Arab Americans are native-born, and 85 percent of Arabs in the United States are citizens.
Although the community traces its roots to every Arab country, most Arab Americans have ancestral ties to Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. The top four states by Arab American population size are California, Florida, Minnesota, and Michigan.
Ayoub noted in his post that Biden's decline in popularity among Arab Americans was “due to the retiring president's unwavering support for Israel's continued actions in Gaza.”
The Israeli military has launched a bombing campaign in Gaza in retaliation for the deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, during which the Palestinian militant group took more than 200 hostages.
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 39,500, with at least 15,000 children killed and over 12,000 injured, according to Gaza health authorities.
Humanitarian organizations, human rights groups and governments around the world have repeatedly called for a ceasefire, but Israel has continued its military operations.
Stein has consistently criticized Biden and his administration for their unwavering support for Israel, warning in an August 1 post on X that the Israeli government was dragging the United States “into World War III.”
Following the Mossad's alleged elimination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and a top Hezbollah official in Beirut last week, Stein criticized Biden and Harris for their “deafening silence” on Israel's “massive escalation into a wider war.
In a July 31 post on X, Stein demanded that “the United States immediately cut off aid to Israel, impose a ceasefire, and arrest the war criminal (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) before he has us all killed.”
Haniyeh's killing on July 31 heightened fears of an all-out regional conflict. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed revenge, warning Israel that it had “paved the way for your harsh punishment.”
Netanyahu's government has not claimed responsibility or commented on Haniyeh's death. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. had “no knowledge or involvement” in the killing.
FAST FACTS
• Arab Americans live in all 50 states, but up to 95 percent live in metropolitan areas.
• New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC and Minneapolis are the top 6 metropolitan areas.
• Nearly 75% of Arab Americans live in just 12 states: California, Michigan, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Minnesota, Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
• Nearly a quarter of Arab Americans are Muslim, while the rest of the religions are Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant.
However, the day before Haniyeh's death, Israel claimed responsibility for killing Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, in an airstrike on a building in southern Beirut. Hezbollah has promised a “definitive” response for Shukr's killing.
Regardless of whether the United States was involved in these escalations, Biden's Middle East policy has been harshly criticized since October, with human rights groups urging the U.S. administration to halt arms transfers to Israel.
In late April, Amnesty International reported that US weapons supplied to Israel had been “used in serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, and in a manner inconsistent with US law and policy.”
In May, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his defense minister, and three Hamas leaders, including Haniyeh, on war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Chris Habiby, ADC’s national director of government affairs and advocacy, says the poll revealed two key insights. “First, President Biden is deeply unpopular among Arab Americans,” he told Arab News.
“Secondly, being anti-genocide is a winning position for our communities across the country.”
Habiby added that the survey results reflect “what we have been calling for for the 10 months and 300 days that this genocide has been ongoing: an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an embargo on arms shipments to Israel.”
Biden suffered a significant defeat in the Michigan Democratic primary in February, when a majority of voters in Dearborn, a city with a large Arab and Muslim population, chose to vote “uncommitted” rather than for him.
According to USA Today, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud has publicly supported the “no-commitment” vote movement, citing Biden’s policy on the Israel-Gaza conflict.
By contrast, Stein actively courted the Arab-American vote in Michigan and elsewhere.
In an interview with Arab News in June, Stein promised that if elected, she would end military support for Israel's “apartheid government” and push for genuine peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Arabs and Muslims have been taken for granted in America. They are victims of racial profiling, Islamophobia and violence against Arabs in this country,” he said.
“There is an absolute violation of our constitutional rights by the government in shutting down our dialogue. People are trying to come to terms with this genocide that we are seeing live and in real time on our iPhones and computer screens.”
Stein stressed that it is “against US law to send weapons to Israel, which violates humanitarian rights and interferes with the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
He added: “People who stand up for our legal and human values are being criminalized and accused of crimes.”
Despite Stein’s growing popularity among Arab-American communities, other presidential candidates still have opportunities to gain more support from Arab and Muslim voters before November.
The ADC poll shows that in addition to the 27.5 percent of respondents who support Harris, 18 percent are undecided about whether to vote in November and 6 percent said they do not plan to vote.
“With about 1 in 4 voters undecided or likely not to show up for election, Harris or any other candidate has plenty of room to garner more support from the community if the right positions are taken,” ADC’s Ayoub wrote in X.
