Commissioned by the Arab American Institute (AAI), the online poll of 2,505 American voters conducted between July 31 and August 1 found that 44% of U.S. voters would back Harris, 40% would support Republican nominee Donald Trump, and 11% would vote third party “if the election for president of the United States were held today.”
But if Harris were to endorse a suspension of U.S. arms shipments and diplomatic support for Israel “until there was a cease-fire and withdrawal of forces from Gaza,” her national support would grow from 44% to 49%.
A majority of Democratic voters say the Gaza crisis is either very or somewhat important in determining how they vote in November, according to the AAI poll.
The new survey, which has a margin of error of 2 percentage points, is consistent with an earlier poll commissioned by the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding Policy Project, which found that Harris would bolster her chances in key battleground states if she backed an arms embargo.
This hinges heavily on the theory that we’ve got a bunch of single issue Anti-Genocide voters. And I’ve lived through too many American sponsored genocides to believe it.
However, three things poll really well in the United States
I doubt she’d get a full 5% bump (unless she announces this the day before early voting starts), because there would inevitably be a bunch of spin and backlash, assuming media didn’t just switch to New Thing and leave her position on Gaza in the rear view mirror. But it seems pretty clear that she’d get some noticeable benefit by siding with American voters on a broadly popular issue.
Lots of Muslim communities in these swing Midwestern states who are already marginally primed to vote for the Democrats. It definitely wouldn’t hurt, given the Uncommitted Vote count in Michigan and Pennsylvania during the Dem primary were some of the highest in the country.
She might even benefit in states like Texas and Arizona, given how many Iranian, Lebanese, and Turkish ex-pats live there. De-escalation in the Middle East would personally mean a lot to a co-worker of mine who still has family living in Tehran, for instance.
But its also very possible that the risk of offending a NY/DC media that’s heavily influenced by AIPAC is just too high. The Israeli Lobby is already biased towards the Republican Party and its Evangelical Anti-Muslim Base voters. Perhaps Harris is simply terrified of what a foreign government with a proven record of reshaping public opinion might do. If Russia can flip an election with a $46k Facebook ad buy, imagine what an irate AIPAC lobbyist could manage with tens of millions.
They aren’t “Anti-Genocide” voters, as evidenced by their complete silence on the actual genocides that are occurring in other parts of the world.
Hint: They’re Anti-Western/Anti-American, and they only give a shit about Palestinians because they are attacking the West.
Plugging your ears and ignoring people for twenty years does not mean they were silent.