How Arab and Muslim voters turned their backs on the Democrats

"No new wars, family values, affordable groceries," read Donald Trump’s campaign fliers in Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest Arab-American community in the United States.

And the message clearly resonated.

Michigan, a swing state, saw Vice President Kamala Harris and the now president-elect Donald Trump campaign heavily to capture the city’s 200,000 Muslim and Arab American voters.

In the end, Trump won the state by just over 84,000 votes, a state President Joe Biden had carried by more than 154,000 in 2020, in part due to overwhelming support from Arab American and Muslim voters.

As Harris and Trump scrambled to persuade undecided voters, Trump’s campaign found that some of the up-for-grabs electorate in battleground states were about six times as likely as other voters to be motivated by their views on Israel’s war in Gaza.

Trump’s team acted on the data and blitzed Michigan voters of Arab and Muslim descent with an anti-war message.

“Why would Muslims support Lying Kamala Harris when she embraces Muslim hating and very dumb person, Liz Cheney,” asked Trump, referring to the daughter of Dick Cheney, the former Vice President under President George Bush who took the country into war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Her father brought years of war and death to the Middle East. He killed many Arabs, many, many Arabs and Muslims,” added Trump to rapturous approval.

“The Muslim American and Arab American communities abandoned Kamala Harris in droves. Our goal was to consolidate all our votes within third parties, and we were well on our way to achieving that until the final weeks leading up to the election,” said Hudhayfah Ahmad from the official Abandon Harris Campaign.

The group had focused on holding the Biden-Harris administration accountable for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Polling conducted in late October by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) showed that 42% of Muslim voters favoured third-party candidate Jill Stein while 41% favoured Vice President Kamala Harris.

This was in sharp contrast to 2020 when CAIR polling revealed 71 percent of Muslim voters planned to vote for Biden.

By 2024, this crucial voter bloc had dramatically collapsed, with 98 percent of Muslims polled saying they disapproved of how President Joe Biden had handled the war in Gaza.

The Muslim vote in the US is estimated at over one million voters. They form a substantial voting bloc in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, largely concentrated in urban areas, including Detroit and Atlanta.

Stein, leader of the Green Party, who prioritised ending Israel's war on Gaza and its occupation of the West Bank, secured just over 44,000 votes in Michigan and over 600,000 nationally. Neither result was enough to prevent Harris from losing nationally or in key swing states.

In the final weeks, however, anecdotal evidence from the Abandon Harris Campaign indicated that Arab and Muslim voters may have shifted towards the Trump ticket, moving away from Stein.

Two things happened, said Ahmad, speaking to The New Arab.

“Firstly, Kamala Harris touted the endorsements of the Cheneys and began campaigning with them,” antagonising the Arab and Muslim communities.

“Then the Trump-Vance campaign ramped up their anti-war rhetoric and promised a community in deep pain and grief that they would immediately work to end the war once in office,” added Ahmad, referring to Israel’s ongoing wars on Gaza and Lebanon.

“These two events combined undermined our plans to consolidate the anti-genocide protest vote within third parties,” said Ahmad.

The aim of the campaign was to “abandon a party they had overwhelmingly supported over the last two decades and to consolidate our votes within third parties, paving a new path forward beyond the existing duopoly,” said Ahmad.

“We succeeded in the first objective but fell short in the second.”

Voting for change

“I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars.” These words were part of Donald Trump’s victory speech. It’s a promise that Arab and Muslim communities are hoping he will fulfil. 

In the lead-up to 5 November, however, there were signs that Harris' campaign shifted from ignoring the Arab and Muslim vote to actively alienating it.

The Harris campaign dispatched former President Bill Clinton to berate Muslims in Michigan for not supporting the Democratic Party. He then faced a backlash from Muslim and Arab Americans after claiming that Israel was "forced" to kill civilians in Gaza and suggesting that the country was in the Holy Land "first" - before Palestinians.

Conversely, by late September, Trump secured the backing of Amer Ghalib, the Yemeni-American Muslim mayor of Hamtramck, a small town in Michigan just outside Detroit, with a population of around 30,000, primarily Muslim.

The photo-op and endorsement also insulated Trump from renewed criticism tied to his first term.

“Many voters did migrate to Trump, especially within the Yemeni American community,” said Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the Michigan chapter of CAIR.

“They saw voting for Trump as a more effective way to send a message to the Democrats than voting third party,” said Walid, speaking to The New Arab.

Yemeni Americans are the second-largest demographic of Arabs in Dearborn, following Lebanese Americans.

“In Dearborn, Michigan, 52 percent of the votes went to Trump, which surprised me. The Yemeni community had an effective grassroots campaign despite the short timeframe,” added Walid.

The Democrats seemed to have “assumed” that Muslims had no choice but to support them, said Walid.

Former President Obama appealed to fear, addressing Muslims as if they had no choice but to support Vice President Harris, said Walid.

Harris herself reinforced this narrative during a campaign stop in Detroit, where she responded to a protester by suggesting that refusing to vote for her would mean a desire to see Trump back in office.

“This rhetoric offended the community’s sense of honour. The Democrats’ loss was their own doing, not the fault of the Muslim community,” he added.

In contrast, Trump adjusted his rhetoric from eight years ago, which “was openly hostile towards Muslims, and he did not meet with Muslim leaders,” said Walid, adding that “he has scaled back most, though not all, of the anti-Muslim rhetoric from his previous campaign”.

While the Arab and Muslim communities rejected Harris, the shift “did not translate into significant support for Stein,” the third-party candidate widely believed to be well-positioned to absorb the vote, said Imam Tom Facchine, Research Director of Islam and Society at the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research.

Harris’ unwillingness to even rhetorically reach out to the communities seemingly pushed at least some to strategically vote for Trump.

“People were worried that Harris might narrowly win, so many who were considering Stein switched to Trump when polls indicated a close race,” said Facchine speaking to The New Arab.

While the Arab and Muslim vote wasn’t the singular factor in Harris’ loss, the community wanted to send a message to future Democratic Party leadership that their vote should not be taken for granted.

People, especially in Michigan and Pennsylvania, many with direct ties to the Trump campaign, told Facchine of the stark contrast between the two campaigns' attitudes towards Arab and Muslim communities.

“The Trump campaign seemed engaged and willing to listen, whereas Harris’s campaign didn’t offer meaningful attention,” he said.

“In the end, Trump's actions - such as his visit to the Yemeni cafe, a significant PR move in Michigan - resonated with voters. His rhetoric about peace in the Middle East and avoiding war appealed to those hoping he would fulfil his promises, even if there was no certainty of his intentions.”

Elis Gjevori is a journalist based in Istanbul. He focuses on the Balkans, Turkey, and the Middle East

Follow him on X: @Elis_Gj