Vote with your conscience, be brave

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/most-muslim-americans-are-voting-jill-stein-or-kamala-harris-poll-finds

By Umar A Farooq in Washington

A new poll conducted this week shows that the majority of Muslim voters in the United States are evenly split on who they plan to vote for as president in the upcoming November election, with roughly 60 percent planning to choose either third-party candidate Jill Stein or Vice President Kamala Harris.

The new survey, part of a report published on Thursday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), shows that the majority of Muslim-American voters have decided against voting for either Republican candidate Donald Trump or the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.

Twenty-nine percent of those Muslim voters polled said they were planning to cast their votes for Stein, leader of the Green Party who has made ending Israel's war on Gaza and its occupation of the West Bank a key policy priority.

"We're grateful for the strong support of Muslim voters who share with us an ironclad determination to end genocide in Gaza, as well as the endless wars in the Middle East, and the discrimination and injustice faced by our Muslim neighbours, immigrants and refugees," Stein said in a statement provided to Middle East Eye.

"We urge all people of conscience to resist the propaganda telling you to hold your nose and vote for genocide. If you vote for genocide, you are actively consenting to it and enabling it. Don’t let them talk you out of your humanity. Stopping genocide is the moral imperative of our time."

Another 29 percent said they are planning to vote for Harris, who some Muslims and pro-Palestinians have claimed has been more sympathetic to Palestinians but has so far said she would maintain support for Israel and has rebuffed demands for an arms embargo on Israel.

The poll also showed that around 11 percent of Muslim voters surveyed are planning to vote for Donald Trump, while four percent are choosing third-party candidate Cornel West and 16 percent are still undecided.

The survey consisted of responses from more than 1,000 registered Muslim voters and was conducted after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week. The survey is part of a larger Cair report chronicling the political attitudes of Muslim voters. This report included an additional survey that polled 2,850 Muslim voters between May and July, prior to Biden dropping out of the race.

"Our latest survey reveals that American Muslim voters are highly engaged in the upcoming presidential election, open to supporting a diverse range of candidates and political parties, and deeply dissatisfied with the current state of the nation, particularly US support for the war on Gaza," Cair national director Nihad Awad said in a statement. Jill Stein on America's democracy crisis, movement building and ending Israel's war on Palestinians Read More »

"The poll also shows that an unusually high number of American Muslims are planning to vote for third-party candidates."

The report reveals the increasingly visible electoral fault lines inside the Muslim-American community, with more Muslims choosing not to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate than in previous years.

A 2020 poll by Cair found that 69 percent of Muslims voted for Joe Biden in the previous presidential election.

However, the survey conducted before Biden dropped out found that only 26 percent of respondents planned to vote for the Democratic Party in the upcoming election, and 60 percent plan to vote for either a third-party candidate or an Independent. That's a 43 percent drop in Muslim support for the Democratic Party.

The Biden administration's support for Israel's ongoing war on Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians and labelled a genocide by rights groups, scholars, and several countries, has outraged Muslim and Arab-American communities.

That outrage has emerged in a number of ways, including mass protests in major US cities and across university campuses, as well as voter outreach efforts.

One such effort, the Abandon Harris (formerly Abandon Biden) campaign, is urging Muslims, Arabs, and voters against the war on Gaza to cast their ballots for a candidate other than Harris - a protest vote to show their widespread disapproval of her administration and campaign's support for Israel.

"While we don’t want to overly rely on polling as a definitive marker of the mood in our communities across the country, if these numbers are statistically accurate, they confirm what we've been saying for almost a year: the Democrats have lost Muslim Americans due to their support and funding of the Israeli genocide in Gaza," Hudhayfah Ahmad, communications director for Abandon Harris, told Middle East Eye.

Cair said this is the first national poll of Muslim voters that was conducted since Harris replaced US President Joe Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket.

When Biden was still running for president, an unreleased Cair poll of 2,500 Muslim voters found that the overwhelming majority, 61 percent, were planning to vote for third-party candidates Stein and West. Biden, meanwhile, only garnered seven percent of the Muslim American vote.

Cair has reported previously that there are more than 2.5 million registered Muslim-American voters in the United States, engulfing previous estimates of 1.2 million voters.