Three battleground states, three Arab Americans' views on the election

The National takes a look at what issues are motivating young Arab Americans in the battleground states to vote for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris - or to stay at home

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, on August 11, 2024. AFP

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Across the US, voters among the estimated 3.7 million Arab Americans are set to play a crucial role in deciding the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election.

Seven battleground states will ultimately decide whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris takes the White House, with Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan – all of which were decided by fewer than 245,000 votes in the 2020 presidential election – among the most critical.

But what issues are motivating young Arab Americans in the battleground states to vote for Mr Trump or Ms Harris – or to stay at home?

Pennsylvania

2020 election result: Joe Biden won by 1.2 per cent or 80,000 votes.

Arab-American population: 126,000

For 25-year-old director and producer Zaina Yasmin Dana, who grew up in Hebron in the occupied West Bank, deciding who to vote for on Tuesday is nearly impossible.

“It’s the only election I’ve ever been undecided in. I’m in progressive circles and many of us, for the first time, are undecided,” she told The National. Four years ago, Ms Dana voted for President Joe Biden.

'It’s the only election I’ve ever been undecided in,' says Zaina Yasmin Dana, a Palestinian American who lives in Pennsylvania. Photo: Zaina Yasmin Dana

“A lot of Democrats have been pushing the idea that Trump would be the death of democracy, but a lot of Arab Americans [already] don’t believe that America was a democracy. Harris promoting Liz and Dick Cheney’s endorsements, who many in the Middle East would say are war criminals, is extremely unpopular.”

Ms Dana said Democrats do not seem to care that an endorsement from former Wyoming congresswoman Ms Cheney alienates Iraqi Americans who lost family members in the Iraq war pushed by her father when he served as vice president in the early 2000s. “It just feels extremely out of touch,” she added.

But the number one issue for her is ending the war in Gaza. “A lot of us are caught in this place that there needs to be some retribution for what [the Democrats] are doing [in Gaza],” she said, adding that Ms Harris has not made any significant effort to reach out to Arab Americans in Pennsylvania.

“We are seeing that our leadership is not listening to people’s calls for an arms embargo [on Israel] … If we are told to pick the lesser evil [Ms Harris over Mr Trump], how else are we supposed to be heard if we are not voting for her? It’s very tricky.”

Ms Dana, who said that every day she receives five to six text messages from Pennsylvania Democrats encouraging her to vote for party members, also highlighted how the progressive figure Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Arabic-language campaign flyers, which were meant to appeal to Arab Americans, mangled the language, leading to mass mockery on social media.

“Is that supposed to encourage Arab Americans to go out and vote? That sort of condescension is reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” said Ms Dana.

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Arizona

2020 election result: Mr Biden won by 0.3 per cent or 10,457 votes.

Arab-American population: 77,000

Palestinian American Jubran Bahbah, 34, lives in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area and works in the convenience store business. He says that while in 2020 he voted for Mr Biden, this year, he is backing Mr Trump.

“He has stated several times that he would end the war in Gaza and Lebanon, and he supports a two-state solution – that would be satisfactory to all parties involved,” he told The National. In April, however, Mr Trump told Time magazine that he thought a peaceful two-state solution seemed unlikely.

“As we’ve seen for the past three-and-a-half years, [Ms Harris] has been sitting on the sidelines, being more of an observer than an action-taker. She has pretty much deflected any discussion regarding the Middle East,” he said. “She seems very disinterested in it and hasn’t said anything compelling.”

Mr Bahbah spent six years in Jerusalem, a time he said deeply affected how he views the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally near the White House in Washington in June 2024 to protest against Israel's actions in Gaza. AFP

“I was there for one of the wars. I’ve had to witness the atrocities that were taking place in person,” he said. One leading reason for him abandoning the Democratic Party is the convention in August, when Ms Harris invited family members of an Israeli-American kidnapped by Hamas to speak on stage, but did not include a Palestinian voice.

“It was a massive slap in the face,” he said. In terms of drawbacks of voting for Mr Trump – who has claimed to be Israel’s “best friend” – Mr Bahbah believes “you can’t do any worse than what’s currently happening, frankly”.

He said that he is not alone in Arizona’s Arab-American community. “To my surprise, there’s a lot more Arab American support [for Mr Trump] than there was in prior elections,” he said. “People are saying that he’s the best option at this point in time.”

Michigan

2020 election result: Mr Biden won by 2.8 per cent or 154,000 votes.

Arab-American population: 400,000

For Jenin Yaseen, a 29-year-old Palestinian American artist living in a state that is home to the country's largest Arab American population, there is no presidential candidate that is worth her vote on Tuesday. Instead, she is thinking about writing the name of Hind Rajab, the six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli soldiers in January along with her uncle’s family and two medics sent to save her.

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“I’m disgusted by both of the parties. I feel like I’ve been told a lot of times that Michigan is a swing state, and we have a lot of power, but if that was true, I think the genocide would have stopped by now,” she told The National. The Dearborn resident said she is staying on top of what it happening in Gaza and Lebanon “almost every minute”.

Nor is Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential candidate, an option for her. Dr Stein was endorsed by the Abandon Harris campaign in Dearborn last month and is expected to secure a sizeable share of Dearborn’s vote on Tuesday due to many rejecting the two main candidates. That is likely to take important votes away from Ms Harris, since Mr Biden relied on more than 30,000 Dearborn votes to prevail in Michigan in 2020.

“I just don’t think she’s making enough effort to really talk to the community in a way that makes me feel confident to vote for her,” Ms Yaseen said. “I don’t think she makes enough effort to come to our events and protests.”

Ms Yaseen saves her greatest disdain for the party that Arab Americans have supported in previous elections.

“The Democratic Party has humiliated our community – that we are just a vassal for them to turn up to vote. They don’t consider us as a people or as a community,” she said. “In fact, I feel a little more disgusted by the Democrats than the GOP because there’s a clear hypocrisy.”