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Muslim and Arab Voters Shifting Away from Democratic Party: Signs of Trump’s Victory and Change in the Party

This year, Muslim and Arab voters have dramatically turned away from the Democratic Party, prompting some community leaders to warn of a permanent shift. This marks a significant change for a voting bloc that has been reliably tied to the Democrats for over two decades, ever since it abandoned the Republican Party.

While no single group was decisive in Tuesday's election, in which President Donald Trump secured a comfortable victory, the results revealed a growing trend of minority voters, particularly Muslims and Arabs, leaning toward Trump. This is despite the president's controversial remarks about these groups.

"We may see a large-scale exodus of multi-ethnic Democrats from the party," said Leila Elbeid, co-chair of the National Uncommitted Movement, a group formed to protest President Joe Biden’s support for Israel's war in Gaza during the Democratic primaries. "If the Democratic Party doesn’t become more aligned with its base, the long-term consequences will be severe."

Muslim Democratic operatives have shared stories about parents, uncles, and aunts who are voting Republican or for third-party candidates for the first time, expressing concerns about how to win them back.

Muslims voted for Republican George W. Bush in 2000, but after the military interventions in the Middle East and domestic policies targeting terrorism, particularly in the wake of 9/11, they abandoned the GOP, viewing its policies as unfairly discriminatory against Muslim communities.

Over the next two decades, Muslim Americans supported Democrats by a margin of nearly two to one, with groups representing the community becoming institutional allies of the party, much like other ethnic communities.

During Trump's presidency, the Democratic Party seemed like the natural home for Muslims, especially after Trump imposed travel bans on people from majority-Muslim countries and failed in his attempts to implement a full ban on Muslim immigrants. His rhetoric and policies, often laced with Islamophobic sentiments, further alienated Muslim voters.

However, on Tuesday, Trump made notable gains in Dearborn, Michigan, the most Arab-American city in the United States. Meanwhile, Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, who campaigned on ending what she called the "genocide" in Gaza, secured a far higher share of the vote.

Trump garnered 42% of the vote in Dearborn—an increase of nearly 15 percentage points since 2020—where more than half the population is of Middle Eastern descent. Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, received just 36% of the vote there, barely half of Biden’s 2020 performance. Stein secured 18%, far above her national average of less than 1%.

These results were echoed in nearby Dearborn Heights, home to another large Middle Eastern community, where Mayor Bill Bazzi endorsed Trump last month.

On the national level, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the country’s largest Muslim lobbying organizations, released a post-election survey. The survey found only 20% of Muslim voters supported Harris, compared to 69% in CAIR's 2020 exit poll for Biden.

“Our final exit poll shows that opposition to the Biden administration’s support for the war in Gaza played a significant role in the sharp drop in Vice President Harris’s support,” said Robert S. McCaw, CAIR’s National Director of Government Affairs.

Muslim and Arab Democrats argue that their party has never seriously addressed the anger within their community. In fact, many Democrats believed Arab and Muslim voters would return to the party—whether willingly or not—once they realized that Trump could win and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might be given free rein.

Source: @FoxNewsEnglish