LONDON: Jill Stein, the US Green Party presidential candidate known for her vocal support for Palestinian rights, has emerged as the top choice among Arab American voters ahead of the November 5 US election, according to a recent poll.
Stein, who is running as a third-party candidate, has received support from over 45 percent of Arab Americans polled by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the largest Arab-American grassroots civil rights organization.
This puts Stein, a physician and environmentalist, ahead of the 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 ADC, Molitico for data insights and Community Pulse, which specializes in survey solutions.
According to Abed Ayoub, ADC's national executive director, the Arab-American voter demographic has increasingly gravitated toward Stein because of her advocacy for Palestinian human rights and her opposition to the Israeli military's actions in Gaza since October.
In a post on social platform X, he said: “Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein's strong poll of 45.3 percent, similar to the previous poll, shows consistent support from the community, largely due to her vocal stance to Palestinian human rights.”
Stein has been a favorite among Arab voters since ADC's last poll in May, where she led with 25 percent support. By comparison, President Joe Biden, who withdrew from the presidential race in July, and Republican candidate Donald Trump, received 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively.
In 2022, 2.2 million people in the United States reported Arab ancestry in that year's Arab Community Survey. The majority of Arab Americans are native-born, and 85 percent of Arabs in the United States are citizens.
While the community traces its roots to each Arab country, the majority of 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 declining popularity among Arab Americans was “dependent on the outgoing president's firm support for Israel's continued action in Gaza.”
The Israeli military launched a bombing campaign in Gaza in retaliation for the deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, during which the Palestinian militant group took more than 200 hostages.
The death toll for Palestinians in Gaza has since exceeded 39,500, with at least 15,000 children killed and over 12,000 others injured, according to Gaza health authorities
Humanitarian organizations, rights groups and governments worldwide 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 Aug. 1 post on X that the Israeli government was dragging the United States “into WWIII.”
Following the suspected Mossad takedown of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and a senior Hezbollah figure in Beirut last week, Stein criticized Biden and Harris for their “deafening silence” on “Israel's massive escalation toward a further war.
In a July 31 post on X, Stein demanded that “the US immediately cut off aid to Israel, mandate a ceasefire and arrest the war criminal (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) before he gets us all killed.”
The killing of Haniyeh on July 31 has raised fears of a wide-ranging regional conflict. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed revenge and warned Israel that it had “paved the way for your severe punishment”.
Netanyahu's government has neither claimed responsibility nor commented on Haniyeh's death. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was “not aware of or involved in” the killing.
FAST FACTS
• Arab Americans live in all 50 states, but up to 95% live in metropolitan areas.
• New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC and Minneapolis are the six largest metropolitan areas.
• Almost 75% of all Arab Americans live in just 12 states: California, Michigan, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Minnesota, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania and Virginia.
• Almost a quarter of Arab Americans are Muslim, while the religious background of the rest is Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant.
But the day before Haniyeh's death, Israel claimed responsibility for killing Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander, in an airstrike on a building in south Beirut. Hezbollah has promised a “definitive” response for Shukr's killing.
Whether the US was involved in these escalations or not, Biden's Middle East policy has faced sharp criticism since October, with human rights groups calling on the US 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 law and human rights, and in a manner inconsistent with US law and policy.”
In May, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor, Karim Khan, sought arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his defense minister, and three Hamas leaders, including Haniyeh, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Chris Habiby, ADC's director of national government affairs and advocacy, says the survey 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's findings reflect “what we have been demanding for the 10 months and 300 days that this genocide has been going on – an immediate, permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo on all arms sent to Israel.”
Biden faced 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.
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud publicly supported the “non-aligned” vote movement, citing Biden's policies on the Israel-Gaza conflict, according to USA Today.
In contrast, Stein has actively courted the Arab American vote in Michigan and beyond.
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 real 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,” she said.
“It is an absolute violation of our constitutional rights by the government to shut down our dialogue. People are trying to grapple with this genocide we are seeing live and in real time on our iPhones and computer screens.”
Stein emphasized that it is “against American law to send weapons to Israel, which violates humanitarian rights and interferes with the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
She added: “The people who stand up to assert our legal values and our human values are being criminalized and charged with crimes.”
Despite Stein's growing popularity among Arab-American communities, other presidential candidates still have an opportunity to gain more support from Arab and Muslim voters before November.
ADC's poll shows that, in addition to the 27.5 percent of respondents who support Harris, 18 percent are unsure of their vote in November, and 6 percent said they don't plan to vote.
“With nearly 1 in 4 voters either undecided or likely to sit out, there is plenty of room for Harris or any other candidate to earn more community support if the right positions are taken,” ADC's Ayoub wrote on X.
