As voting begins on Tuesday in what Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris has described as one of the “closest races in history”, a recent poll reveals just how tight the contest is.
A poll conducted by NBC on Sunday found Harris and her opponent Donald Trump locked in a dead heat, with each on 49 percent of the vote.
The election will most likely be decided in seven key “swing states”, which could go either to Trump or Harris under the US’s electoral college system, with results in the other 43 US states considered a foregone conclusion for either Trump or Harris.
Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are the seven states all eyes will be on as the results start coming in.
One state, Michigan, has a high Arab and Muslim American population, with an estimated 200,000 voters of Arab origin.
There has been growing anger among Arab and Muslim Americans over the Biden-Harris administration’s virtually unqualified support for Israel as it wages a horrifically brutal war in Gaza, and many in the community have refused to support Harris.
They have instead given their support to Jill Stein, a perennial left-wing candidate who has expressed support for the Palestinian cause, with an August opinion poll by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) showing that 40 percent of Muslim voters in Michigan supported Stein, while 18 percent supported Trump and only 12 percent Harris.
Stein has been endorsed by the Abandon Harris campaign, which seeks to mobilise the protest vote against the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Following the 2016 presidential election, Stein faced bitter accusations that she had helped Trump win the election against Democrat candidate Hilary Clinton.
Trump took Michigan that year by a very narrow margin, with 47.5 percent of the vote versus 47.3 percent to Hillary Clinton.
The state reverted to the Democrats in 2020 but by quite a narrow margin. Biden – with crucial help from Arab and Muslim voters – received just over 154,000 votes more than Trump.
Current opinion polls show Harris and Trump running neck and neck in Michigan, with 45 percent of the vote each, and Stein on two percent.
The unpopularity of Harris among Arab and Muslim supporters could easily translate into Kamala Harris losing Michigan, with the other six swing states going either way.
“If you look at the past losses in Michigan, it can come down to a very small amount of votes. So, if enough Arab-Americans essentially use Stein as a protest vote, it could lose her the state,” The New Arab’s Sam Hamad said.
However, Hamad predicted that Harris would still win the US election despite this, citing her overall popularity in the US and previous opinion polls.
“The Selzer poll, which is an Iowa poll that is of huge significance going back to 2008, shows Kamala overperforming massively – first-time voters are voting for her, women are voting for her, she’s even about 50/50 with white senior men,” he said.
“In 16 out of the last 17 elections, only once has the candidate who has a worse net popularity rating than the other won. Kamala is just hugely more popular than Trump,” he added.
