From Alex Seitz-Wald, NBC News Senior Political Correspondent
Arab and Muslim voters left the Democratic Party this year, prompting some regional leaders to warn of a permanent shift away from a voting bloc that has voted reliably blue for two decades since abandoning the Republican Party. Ta.
Although no single group made a difference in the election, the results show that several groups are leaning toward Mr. Trump.
“We may see a mass exodus of generations of Democrats from the party,” said Leila Elabed, co-chair of the national Uncommitted Movement.
“If Democrats don’t move in line with their base, there will be long-term consequences.”
Muslim voters supported Republican George W. Bush in 2000, but opposed his post-9/11 military interventions overseas and anti-terrorism policies at home that disproportionately targeted Muslims. He fled the Republican Party because he felt that he was being abused.
In the two decades since, Muslim Americans have broken with the Democratic Party by nearly 2-1, but groups representing the community have systematically aligned themselves with the Democratic Party, as have other groups representing voters of color. did.
But on Tuesday, Donald Trump won in Dearborn, Michigan, the country’s most Arab-American city, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who called for an end to what she called the genocide in Gaza, won He captured a much larger market share than he had in other regions. .
The results were nearly identical in neighboring Dearborn Heights, also home to a large Middle Eastern community.
Nationally, the Council on American-Islamic Relations conducted its own post-election survey of Muslim voters.
CAIR’s 2020 exit poll found that 69% of respondents supported Joe Biden, while only 20% said they supported Kamala Harris.
“Final exit polls of American Muslim voters confirm that opposition to the Biden administration’s support for the Gaza war played a significant role, contributing to Vice President Harris’s sharp decline in approval ratings.” said Robert S. McCaw of CAIR.
“We tried to warn people,” said Rep. Ruwa Lonman, a Palestinian-American Democrat.
“I feel like people thought we were just faking it to get attention.”
