This story was written by Teen Vogue's 2024 Student Correspondents, a team of college students and recent graduates covering the election cycle from key battleground states.
A record number of Arab and Muslim American voters turned out during the 2020 presidential election. Most notably, in key swing states like Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, they helped President Joe Biden clinch a narrow margin to secure an electoral win. For the past several decades, party affiliations among Arab and Muslim American voters have favored Democratic candidates. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, however, the tides have begun to turn, with Arab and Muslim American support for the Democratic Party plummeting to 17% and 10%, respectively, according to surveys conducted by the Arab American Institute last fall. Rather than support Biden in the primaries, community leaders organized a mass movement to vote “uncommitted” to demonstrate opposition to the war in Gaza.
Then, in July, President Biden dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House, ending his bid for reelection, and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee. For many in the Arab and Muslim American community, Harris brought forth a sense of relief, because she is a daughter of immigrants, like many Arab and Muslim American voters, with an inherent understanding of the difficult duality of straddling multiple cultural identities — and most importantly, because she is not Biden.
Nada Al-Hanooti, national deputy organizing director at Emgage, a Muslim civic engagement group, tells Teen Vogue, “There was some hope, and the door was open again for the Democratic Party. Kamala stepped in, and I think that was her chance to engage our community. Some of them were still third-party. Some of them were open to negotiating this conversation with the Harris administration." Al-Hanooti adds, "Her statements were a lot more sympathetic to Palestinians in comparison to Joe Biden's and her pick for VP Tim Walz was a step in the right direction.”
Where Biden faltered and failed to connect with Arab and Muslim-American voters, for a time, it seemed like Harris wouldn’t. Yet, as the presidential election in November fast approaches, these voters still harbor serious concerns. Harris came out with her strongest statements in support of Israel yet at the Democratic National Convention, voicing her support for Israel’s “right to defend itself.” At the September 10 debate against Trump, she again ruled out an arms embargo, and backed the Biden administration’s ceasefire process.
The conditions of the war in Gaza are intensely personal. Some people are grieving dozens of family members, while others are reckoning with what it means to watch civilians who share their identity die violently. Arab and Muslim American voters are a unique, ever-changing constituency, and while Harris’s position on US involvement in Gaza may remain a top policy point, the group's visibility as a voting bloc also influences a wide range of legislation. Arab and Muslim American votes remain something Harris and the Democratic Party must earn, particularly in key swing states.
As Asma Nizami, co-chair of the Uncommitted Minnesota delegation, says, “Muslims have always been tokenized to the point where we're really just brought in at the last moment and told, ‘Well, do this, because otherwise you're gonna get deported,' or 'Do this, otherwise you're gonna get Trump.’ The community is feeling like they've been truly left out because they don't want to let their brothers and sisters in Gaza down right now and, simultaneously, don't want to be Muslim-banned in January if Trump [is] elected. So we're feeling like, What will happen if I do and what will happen if I don't vote for Kamala Harris in November?”
Just as Harris’s campaign began to take off, she traveled to Michigan, where she met with members of the Uncommitted movement and then held a rally. During the second event, pro-Palestinian protesters called out during her speech, to which she sternly responded, “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” The audience burst into roaring applause. “What went viral was not the fact that people had spoken to her before the rally,” Nizami says. “What went viral was her response and that she was unkind.”
That campaign stop in Michigan defined a turning point for some Arab and Muslim American voters, many of whom previously saw the vice president as a tentatively positive alternative to Biden.
“I think she kind of shot herself in the foot when she silenced the pro-Palestinian protesters,” Al-Hanooti says. “They don’t want Trump to win. They're here to advocate for the people who cannot advocate for themselves. They're here to advocate for the kids being pulled out of rubble, for the parents who are losing all their children. The Democratic Party keeps pushing this ‘but Trump is worse’ narrative on us, but to those people, to my community, what's worse than losing 80, 100 family members all at once?”
Sam Doten, co-chair of the Uncommitted Minnesota Delegation, echoes this sentiment: “We’re ringing the alarm bells to the administration and to Vice President Harris that this is a liability. Often the responsibility is put on voters to compromise, compromise, compromise. But there's also a responsibility of the candidates to move to where the voters are and represent them.”
Harris’s firm response to pro-Palestinian protesters sparked a swirling discourse online, raising critical questions, such as: To what extent can criticism of Harris exist without falling into the realm of anti-Blackness? Given Harris’s position on the Israel-Hamas war, is she the perceived safest option? And if Harris loses, then what?
“A lot of folks have told us we have to vote for Harris because life is dangerous for us and for our community under the Trump administration," Al-Hanooti tells Teen Vogue. "And I completely understand that. But our freedom rests on the freedom of each other. We are not free until we're all free. It is a collective struggle.”
For young Arab and Muslim-American voters, the stakes are equally as high. Some like Noor, 17, is a student in California who is on the precipice of her very first presidential election. “Being the ideal candidate means having a moral compass and being on the side of humanity,” Noor, who asked to withhold her last name to preserve her anonymity, said.
Sarah, 23, a registered Michigan voter who also asked to withhold her last name, says Harris “needs to show her support for the people of Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Yemen, and most importantly, her own constituents.”
As the November election looms, the demands of many Arab and Muslim American voters remain the same but grow more urgent. “Our goal is to get Kamala Harris to meet with us and go over a plan for getting a ceasefire and an arms embargo,” says Nizami.
“And that ceasefire plan needs to be different than the one that Joe Biden has right now,” Doten notes.
Though the political voting landscape for Arab and Muslim American voters still remains in flux, Al-Hanooti says, “I think there's a sizable population that's still going to go third-party, but I think there is still time to persuade them. And there's still some people sitting on the sidelines, like me.”
Al-Hanooti adds, “I'm waiting for her to do the right thing. There’s still time for her to do the right thing, to do right by our community, to do right by the children of Gaza, and by the American people.”
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