5 days ago
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TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Donald Trump from the Republican Party emerged victorious in the presidential election on November 5, 2024, compared to his competitor Kamala Harris from the Democratic Party. One of the factors contributing to Donald Trump's victory is the support of Arab Muslims in the United States (U.S.) who turned to him after two decades of supporting the Democratic Party.
"No new wars, family values, affordable food," reads a campaign brochure by Donald Trump in Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest Arab-American community in the United States as reported by The New Arab.
Michigan, a decisive state, saw Vice President Kamala Harris and current President Donald Trump campaigning vigorously to attract 200,000 Muslim and Arab American voters in the city.
In the end, Trump won the state with over 84,000 votes, a state that President Joe Biden won by over 154,000 votes in 2020. The majority of Donald Trump's victories came from Arab American and Muslim voters.
The Israel-Hamas Conflict Becomes Decisive Factor
One determining factor is the views of Arab Muslim Americans on the Israel-Gaza conflict compared to other voters. The Trump team followed up on this data and targeted Michigan voters of Arab and Muslim descent with anti-war messages.
"Why do Muslims support Kamala Harris the Liar when she supports someone very stupid and anti-Muslim, Liz Cheney," Trump asked, referring to Dick Cheney's daughter, former Vice President under President George Bush who led the country into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Her father brought war and death for years to the Middle East. He killed many Arabs, many Arabs and Muslims," Trump said, greeted with joy.
"The Muslim American and Arab American communities are abandoning Kamala Harris in droves. Our target is to consolidate all our votes in a third party, and we are on track to achieve this in the weeks leading up to the election," said Hudhayfah Ahmad from the Abandon Harris campaign group. The group focuses on holding the Biden-Harris administration accountable for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
A poll conducted in late October by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) showed that 42 percent of Muslim voters support third-party candidate Jill Stein while 41 percent support Vice President Kamala Harris. This is in stark contrast to 2020 when a CAIR poll revealed that 71 percent of Muslim voters planned to vote for Biden.
In 2024, 98 percent of surveyed Muslims said they do not approve of President Joe Biden's handling of the Gaza war.
The number of Muslim voters in the US is estimated to be over a million voters. They form a significant voting bloc in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, mostly concentrated in urban areas, including Detroit and Atlanta.
Stein, the Green Party leader, who prioritizes ending the Israel-Gaza war and occupation in the West Bank, garnered over 44,000 votes in Michigan and over 600,000 votes nationally. However, the results were not enough to stem Harris' defeat.
Kamala Harris Campaign Alienates Muslim Voters
However, in the final weeks, the results of the Abandon Harris Campaign indicate that Arab and Muslim voters may have shifted to Trump and away from Stein. According to Ahmad, two things happened. "First, Kamala Harris praised the Cheney family's support and began campaigning with them, which angered the Arab and Muslim communities," he said.
"Then the Trump-Vance campaign intensified their anti-war rhetoric and promised to the grieving and deeply pained public that they would soon work to end the war once in office," Ahmad said, referring to the ongoing Israel-Gaza and Lebanon conflicts.
"Both events simultaneously damaged our plans to consolidate protest votes against genocide in a third party," Ahmad said.
The goal of this campaign is to leave the party they have greatly supported for the past two decades and to consolidate our voices in a third party, paving a new way forward beyond the existing duopoly," Ahmad said. "We have succeeded in achieving the first goal but failed in the second goal."
Donald Trump's words of not starting a war but stopping wars became part of his victory speech. That promise was expected to be fulfilled by the Arab and Muslim community.
As the November 5th deadline approached, there were signs that the Harris campaign shifted from ignoring Arab and Muslim voices to actively alienating them. The Harris campaign team sent former President Bill Clinton to berate Muslims in Michigan for not supporting the Democratic Party.
He then faced backlash from Muslim and Arab Americans after claiming that Israel was "forced" to kill civilians in Gaza and stating that the country was in the "first" Holy Land before Palestine.
On the contrary, by late September, Trump secured support from Amer Ghalib, a Yemini-American Muslim mayor in Hamtramck, a small city in Michigan outside Detroit with a population of about 30,000, mostly Muslims. The photo op and support shielded Trump from new criticisms related to his first term in office.
"Many voters shifted to Trump, especially in the Yemeni American community," said Dawud Walid, Executive Director of CAIR's Michigan chapter.
"They saw voting for Trump as a more effective way to send a message to the Democrats than voting third party," Walid said.
On Saturday, November 9, Donald Trump won the state of Arizona in the US presidential election, defeating his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris. The victory also marks the success of the Republican camp in capturing the last swing state that was previously won by the Democrats in 2020.
With an additional 11 electoral votes from Arizona, Trump from the Republican Party has now secured a total of 312 electoral votes. Harris obtained 226 electoral votes. In the 2020 election, President Joe Biden won this key state previously captured by Trump in 2016.
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