New polling makes it clear that adherents to the Islamic faith aren’t rushing to support Kamala Harris this November.
To the contrary, she’s fighting Green Party candidate Jill Stein for the lead.
She may have the current president to blame for that, but Muslim voters are nevertheless poised to exact revenge on the VP at the ballot box.
A poll of 1,159 Muslims released Thursday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations shows Harris and Stein tied at 29%, with 11% of the cohort’s support going to Donald Trump, 4% to Cornel West, and 1% to Libertarian Chase Oliver. A significant 9% say they aren’t voting.
To put that number in perspective, even a majority of Democrats, who make up 70% of the sample, aren’t backing the party’s nominee.
Incredibly, this represents growth for Harris from the previous CAIR poll of 2,500 Muslims conducted before the vice president became the nominee, but was never released.
In that previously unreported survey, 36% backed Stein and 25% supported West, with President Biden drawing 7% and Trump at 5%.
In light of those numbers, the conditions for Harris could be worse.
“With over 90% of Muslim voters still indicating they have a voting preference or are still considering which candidate to support, the American Muslim community continues to exhibit a strong determination to participate in this election despite widespread discontent,” CAIR wrote.
CAIR contends that Muslim voters have a “significant presence in swing states,” and the numbers bear that out in two particularly: Michigan, where nearly 250,000 Muslims live amid 8.4 million registered voters; and Pennsylvania, home to nearly 150,000 more and where Republicans recently are winning the registration battle with Democrats.
In this context, Biden declaring himself a “Zionist” and failing to restrain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to their satisfaction has nearly universally irked Muslims. In the poll taken when he was still a candidate, 98% of respondents said they disapproved of the president’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Harris is better off than Biden, and has been vocal about wanting a cease-fire since March.
But clearly that’s not enough for the critics.
Even in places without a large Muslim population, like Georgia, she faces pressure from a vocal plank of her party, and is forced to deviate from her rally scripts to address those.
“We are fighting for a democracy, and in a democracy, everyone has a right and should have their voices heard,” Harris said in Savannah Thursday. “But on the subject, the president and I are working around the clock. We have to get a hostage deal done and a cease-fire.”
As the race to November accelerates, the pressure is piling on the Democratic administration to deliver on policy promises for Muslim Democrats — perhaps at the expense of Israel.
