One Election Question Is About to Be Answered. It Doesn’t Look Good For Kamala Harris

One of the Biggest Questions of the Election Is About to Be Answered. It Doesn’t Look Good for Kamala Harris

In October last year, Mohamed Almawri joined the grassroots movement Listen to Michigan to demand the Biden administration pursue an arms embargo and a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. A Yemeni American, he was once fairly inactive politically. But when Listen to Michigan and similar appeals failed to lead to meaningful change—even after a glimmer of hope when Kamala Harris took over the Democratic ticket—he decided to become part of a bloc of Arab voters and cast a “conscience vote” in Michigan. For him, that means voting for Jill Stein.

“We’re going to make history as the Muslim community standing against a U.S.–funded genocide,” Almawri told me. “We’re holding this administration accountable,” he said, echoing many such voters who see Harris’ stance toward Israel as simply an extension of Joe Biden’s. (Harris has called for a cease-fire tied to hostage releases, but has not committed to ending U.S. aid for the war.)

We know now that Jill Stein was not ultimately the 2016 spoiler that sank Hillary Clinton in swing states. But this year, there’s reason to believe that the small but significant sliver of protest voters in states like Michigan, which is currently about as close as it can get in polling, could have a real impact on the election results.

And if this protest means Donald Trump becomes president again? Almawri, like many others I spoke to, says he’s fine with that.

“The value of defeating the Democratic Party makes Trump a price we’re willing to pay,” he said, quoting an imam from a recent sermon in Dearborn, where rallies and religious sermons have encouraged their communities to “conscience vote.” Like others, he believes casting a vote for a Democrat would be akin to supporting genocide, and that helping Trump win would send a stark message to Democrats. “Both parties are complicit. Trump, Biden—it doesn’t matter. But our vote can still mean something, and we intend to make it clear. When the administration won’t listen, the least we can do is vote in a way that forces them to see us.”

Sonia Rosen, a voter in Pennsylvania, told me she felt “mocked” by Harris’ approach to Democratic voters, a majority of whom, polls show, want to see a permanent cease-fire in place, as Harris continued to support Israel as it expanded its war into Lebanon. Her plan as of now is to vote for Jill Stein. “I can’t endorse a candidate who is promising to kill more Arabs,” she said. “Every single day, we’re looking at average people—children, parents—with their faces blown off. We are watching it unfold. It’s painful to watch this happening day in and day out. And it’s painful to watch people so cavalierly dismissing the lives of Arabs as if we don’t count.”

She feels disgusted when other Democrats urge her to consider Harris as the lesser of two evils: “It is an impossible task to ask me to have to vote for someone who is actively contributing to a genocide of people like me, that directly affects friends and family. I’m not going to do that.”

On potentially delivering the White House to Trump, she said, “We had him once, and he was awful then. But I think it’s worse for the long term, strategically, to allow the Democrats to do whatever they want and still vote for them. That’s how we got a Democratic Party that is so far to the right, and endorsed by Dick Cheney.”

This trend is troubling for Mohammed Maraqa, a Democratic pollster and data scientist, who himself will be voting for Kamala Harris but watched the current situation develop in real time.

“A lot of Arab American and Muslim American groups reached out to the administration and to the State Department as the conflict worsened, and they really got nowhere,” Maraqa said. “Despite Israel’s violations of U.S. and international law, they refused to back down. And Biden appeared dogmatic and an idealogue when it came to Israel and Zionism.”

Maraqa was involved in surveys of Arab American groups, including the influential American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and he says Stein earned wide support. For those voters, she has emerged as a refreshing option, vocal in her condemnation of the status quo and supportive of policies like a cease-fire and arms embargo. During Biden’s campaign, he had promised a “new day” for Arab and Muslim Americans, pledging inclusivity and a reversal of the Muslim ban, a message that helped win back battleground states like Michigan in 2020. Yet as the conflict progressed, Maraqa said, the Biden administration continued to engage in “a daily exercise in gaslighting,” particularly in contentious State Department briefings that routinely go viral among Arab voters.

“It’s a lot tighter than 2016 and 2020. So these margins can make a difference in key states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. [Stein] could really be a spoiler,” he said.

Reem Abuelhaj, an organizer in Pennsylvania who was involved in the uncommitted primary vote there, wants Democrats to reckon with how painful it is to ask a Palestinian American like her to continue supporting the current administration. “We’re watching people we love lose family members and live in daily fear. It feels personal watching hundreds of thousands of people who look like us, who have names like us, living through this genocide and watch the U.S. administration continue to send our tax dollars that are literally killing children,” she said. “We feel backed into a corner.”

She knows several Arab voters who will “hold their nose and vote for Harris to avoid Trump.” But Abuelhaj told me she can’t bring herself to do the same. “This campaign is about identifying the leverage we do have. I’m a Palestinian American who has lived in Pennsylvania my whole life. I’ve voted Democrat in every election until this one, when many of us looked around and realized this was the leverage we have right now,” she said. “We know another Trump presidency would be disastrous. But I cannot bring myself to go to the polls and cast my ballot for a candidate who is responsible for the death of family members, and is clear on continuing support for this genocide.”

In Arizona, another critical state, the stakes have never felt higher for Mohyeddin Abdulaziz, a Palestinian American lawyer and the co-founder of the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance. Here, Arab American voters once mobilized in huge numbers for Democratic candidates, seeing them as allies, but with the Biden–Harris administration’s unwavering support for Israel, their support seems to have eroded entirely.

“There’s this patronizing tone,” he told me. “People say, ‘You don’t understand how dangerous Trump is,’ as if we’re unaware of what’s at stake. But when we watch our tax dollars fund violence abroad, it’s hard to just fall in line.”

Earlier this year, in the Democratic primaries, Abdulaziz helped rally around the uncommitted movement. “We thought maybe we could nudge them on Palestine,” Abdulaziz explained. But his efforts to engage the Harris campaign were met with a frustrating silence. “We even reached out to Harris’ Arizona campaign director,” he said, “and kept hearing, ‘I hear you, I hear you.’ But we got nothing. No position statement, no real engagement. It’s insulting.”

“We’re anti-genocide voters,” Halah Ahmad, a Democratic organizer with Listen to Wisconsin, said, summing up the collective stance of many who remain unconvinced to vote for Harris. She said she sees her position as a swing-state voter as an opportunity to continue centering the suffering in Gaza, stressing the urgency of the issue.

Swing-state voters, especially those with progressive views, see themselves as wielding what they call a “microphone” in the final weeks leading up to the election—a chance to amplify their concerns on a national stage. “Right now, the microphone for swing-state voters is the bigger opportunity,” Ahmad said. “We’re using it to demand an anti-war agenda. If Vice President Harris wants our support, she needs to take action that reflects that.” Ahmad said there have been heated internal debates within her communities and her own family about this. But for her, there is no debate: “At the end of the day, it’s a genocide we’re talking about. And when you ask people to turn away from that reality, you’re asking them to turn away from their values.”

Still, Ahmad herself hasn’t yet cast a ballot. “I’m holding on to my ballot until the last second,” she said. “Because as long as we have that ballot in hand, we have a microphone to demand change. This election may not bring about that change overnight, but our voices will be heard.”