A year after the Oct. 7 attacks, Kamala Harris faces deepening Democratic fractures in a crucial state. Interviews suggest that her support from Muslim and Arab Americans is drying up.
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Imam Hassan Qazwini, who leads the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights, Mich., said he planned to vote third party this year after supporting President Biden in 2020.
One year after the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, the relentless and escalating violence in the Middle East is threatening the Democratic coalition in the United States. Arab American voters show signs of abandoning the Democratic ticket, while some Jews worry about their future in a party their families embraced for generations.
Nowhere are those tensions more politically important than in Michigan, a crucial battleground state with a significant population of Arab American and Muslim voters.
Four years ago, President Biden won Michigan with strong backing from many of those Americans. But interviews this weekend with voters, activists and community leaders in the Detroit area suggested that support for the Democratic ticket has not merely eroded among Arab Americans and Muslims.
In some neighborhoods, it has all but vanished.
“I personally don’t know anyone who would vote for Harris,” said Imam Hassan Qazwini, who founded the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights and said that he planned to vote third party this year after supporting Mr. Biden in 2020 in his personal capacity. Initially, he said, many Muslims hoped that Vice President Kamala Harris would “show some even-handedness and fairness in handling the conflict. But unfortunately, that was wishful thinking.”
Many of those voters are outraged by the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel as it has waged war in Gaza and now in Lebanon. That sentiment is intensifying as the fighting spreads across the Middle East less than a month before Election Day — and it is a warning sign for Ms. Harris in a closely divided state.
The discontent is palpable on the ground in Michigan, which has more than 300,000 residents with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry, though high-quality polling on Arab American and Muslim voters is scant. In nearly two dozen interviews this weekend with a range of these voters across levels of religious observance and familial countries of origin, just two said they were voting for her.
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