As the US presidential election approaches, the race to attract voters is intensifying. Among the various constituencies that Democrats and Republicans are competing for, one stands out in particular: the Muslim community.
Although Muslims make up about 1 percent of the U.S. population, they are a significant voting bloc because they are concentrated in key states that are often narrowly won in elections.
In this election season, the Muslim community seems more united than ever around a common political issue: the war in Gaza. Any candidate hoping to win over a large share of Muslim voters will have to respond to the community’s demands for an end to the bloodshed in Palestine.
That’s according to a new study published by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) in partnership with Emgage and Change Research. It is based on a survey conducted in late June and early July on how Muslims in three key states – Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan – plan to vote in the 2024 presidential election.
We have seen how President Joe Biden’s handling of the Gaza war has transformed Muslims, who in 2020 were among his biggest supporters, into his fiercest critics.
In 2020, about 65% of Muslim voters in these states turned out to vote for Biden. This support was critical to his electoral victory, as he won key states by a narrow margin. He won Georgia by just 12,000 votes, a state where more than 61,000 Muslims voted, and Pennsylvania by 81,000 votes, where 125,000 Muslims voted.
By contrast, in our poll, conducted before Biden withdrew from the presidential race, only 12% of respondents said they would vote for him, a dramatic drop in support not seen in any other group surveyed. While this has implications for the presidential race, it has also reflected a broader disillusionment with the Democratic Party establishment.
The war on Gaza has united Muslim voters like no other issue in recent history. According to the 2020 American Muslim Poll conducted by ISPU, health care (19%), the economy (14%), and social justice (13%) were the top voting issues for Muslim voters.
Compare that to 2024: Across the partisan spectrum, the top priority for Muslim voters in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan is the war in Gaza (61%), followed by keeping the United States out of foreign wars (22%).
Cutting military aid to Israel also garnered support from the vast majority of Muslim voters in our survey, who, regardless of partisan views, all saw the policy as a reason to vote for a candidate. While a war abroad may seem far removed from the daily concerns of American Muslim voters, many see the U.S. role—providing unconditional aid and diplomatic cover to Israel—as complicit in the ongoing oppression of Palestinians.
The importance of the Gaza war to Muslim voters was clear months before we conducted our survey. The Muslim community played a leading role in the National Nonpledge Movement, which urged Democratic voters to cast “nonpledge” ballots in their states’ presidential primaries. The initiative successfully convinced more than 700,000 Democrats to do so, making clear their demand for a change in the Biden administration’s tone and policies toward Israel and Palestine.
This dramatic migration of Muslims away from Biden, however, does not constitute a massive leap across the aisle. Muslim support for Trump has increased from 18% in 2020 to 22% in 2024 in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Former Muslim Biden supporters are overwhelmingly switching to candidates from another party or are still undecided. Our study found that nearly a third of Muslim voters will either vote for a candidate from another party (27%) or register a candidate (3%). About 17% of Muslims said they have not yet chosen a candidate, compared with 6% of the general public.
This means that there is still time and room for maneuver for candidates to conquer this vital constituency. And it seems that they are succeeding.
Not only has Biden dropped out of the race, but Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has signaled that she is distancing herself from her staunch support for Israel’s war on Gaza. In July, the vice president skipped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, said she would not remain silent on the suffering in Gaza, and made clear her support for a ceasefire.
In August, she chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who is widely seen as more supportive of the Palestinian cause than Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was on the ticket, as her running mate. This year, Walz has praised Minnesota’s unengaged voters, calling them “engaged citizens” and saying, “This issue is a humanitarian crisis. They have every right to be heard.”
And while Muslims were cautiously optimistic at best, the Harris campaign’s refusal to allow a Palestinian-American to speak at the Democratic National Convention last week dampened that hope.
Third-party candidates Jill Stein and Cornel West have both spoken out in support of the people of Gaza. West chose Melina Abdullah, a black Muslim, as his running mate. Stein chose Muslim activist and academic Rudolph “Butch” Ware.
Even Republican candidate Donald Trump’s campaign is reaching out to Arab American voters, which is surprising given the anti-Muslim rhetoric he used during his 2016 campaign. People associated with his campaign have tried to woo Arab voters in key states. Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany, married the son of a Lebanese-American businessman, Massad Boulous, who is trying to persuade Michigan Arabs to vote for the former president because of the administration’s failed current policy on Gaza.
The Muslim community’s mobilization on the Palestinian issue has come at a cost to many. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported an unprecedented spike in incidents of discrimination: a 56 percent increase in reports of Islamophobia in 2023. Anti-Palestinian racism has also skyrocketed, a disturbing trend reflected in the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont who were wearing keffiyehs. Thousands of people—many of them Muslim students—have been arrested during campus protests, and many have been threatened with expulsion or faced criminal prosecution for their pro-Palestinian activism at colleges and universities across the United States.
And yet, despite the consequences of taking a public stand on Palestine, Muslim voters appear undeterred this time around. Solidarity with the people of Gaza emerges as the most important issue for American Muslim voters, a group that no candidate can afford to ignore.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
