LONDON: US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, known for her vocal support for Palestinian rights, has become 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, 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 physician 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 July 27-28 through a partnership between ADC, data insights Molitico, and survey solutions specialist Community Pulse.
According to Abed Ayoub, ADC's national executive director, the Arab-American population of voters has increasingly gravitated toward Stein because of her support for 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 polls of 45.3%, similar to the previous poll, demonstrate consistent community support, largely due to her vocal stance against of the human rights of the Palestinians”.
Stein has been the favorite among Arab voters since the last ADC opinion poll in May, where she led with 25 percent support. In 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 US reported Arab ancestry in that year's Arab Community Survey. Most Arab Americans are native-born, and 85% of Arabs in the US are citizens.
While the community has its roots in 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 declining popularity among Arab-Americans is due to the retiring president's “strong support for Israel's continued actions 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 of Palestinians in Gaza has since exceeded 39,500, with at least 15,000 children killed and more than 12,000 injured, according to Gaza health authorities.
Humanitarian organizations, 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 Aug. 1 post on X that the Israeli government is dragging the U.S. “into World War III.”
After Mossad's suspected removal 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 the “massive escalation of Israel to a wider war.
In a July 31 post on X, Stein called for “the US to immediately cut off aid to Israel, impose a cease-fire, and arrest the war criminal (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) before he kills us all.” .
The killing of Haniyeh on July 31 raised 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 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.
RAPID Acts
• 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 top 6 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 rest's religious background is Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant.
However, a day before Haniyeh's death, Israel claimed responsibility for the killing of Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander, in an airstrike on a building in southern Beirut. Hezbollah promised a “definite” response to Shukr's killing.
Whether or not the US was involved in these escalations, Biden's Middle East policy has come under fire since October, with 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 were “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 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 of all, President Biden is deeply unpopular among Arab Americans,” he told Arab News.
“Second, being anti-genocide is a win-win position for our communities across the country.”
Habiby added that the poll results reflect “what we have been calling for in the 10 months and 300 days that this genocide has been going on – an immediate, permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo on all weapons sent to Israel.”
Biden faced a significant defeat in Michigan's 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 has publicly endorsed the “noncommittal” vote movement, citing Biden's policy on the Israel-Gaza conflict, according to USA Today.
Instead, Stein 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 genuine peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Arabs and Muslims have been taken for granted in America. They are victims of racial profiling, Islamophobia and anti-Arab violence in this country,” she said.
“There is an absolute violation of our constitutional rights by the government to shut down our dialogue. People are trying to confront this genocide that we're 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.”
She added: “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.
The ADC poll indicates that in addition to the 27.5 percent of respondents who support Harris, 18 percent are undecided about their vote in November and 6 percent said they do not plan to vote.
“With nearly 1 in 4 voters either undecided or leaning toward not voting, Harris or any other candidate has room to gain more community support if the right positions are taken,” ADC's Ayoub wrote on X.
