Muslim advocacy groups may have moved the needle in the US election - analysis

It’s still too early to know the extent to which advocacy around the Israel-Gaza conflict affected the US election. But the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America’s largest Muslim advocacy group, says that Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss was significantly influenced by voters’ opposition to the Biden Administration’s Israeli policy. 

“It is important for Democratic and other elected officials to recognize that Vice President Harris’ steep drop in support in key states compared to President Biden’s 2020 victory resulted, in part, from the deep frustration and disillusionment that many young, Muslim, Arab, Black, and other voters feel with the Biden-Harris Administration due to its steadfast financial and military support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza,” CAIR executive director Nihad Awad said in a press release issued the day after the election. 

CAIR advocacy group

CAIR Action, the organization’s lobbying affiliate, recommended that Muslim voters support “candidates on the ballot and write-ins who support cease-fire, arms embargo, and other just policies, such as Dr. Jill Stein, Dr. Cornel West, and Chase Olliver.” In the days leading up to the election, CAIR sent out 600,000 text messages to Muslim Americans urging them to vote. 

An exit poll released by CAIR found that Green Party candidate Jill Stein was the preferred presidential candidate amongst Muslim American voters, with 53% of Muslim voters favoring her, followed by President Donald Trump with 21% and Harris with 20%. 

Stein, who is Jewish, received 0.5% of the overall popular vote. Her running mate was Rudolph “Butch” Ware III, a Muslim convert from Washington, DC. Both Stein and Ware have expressed opposition to Zionism and support for the October 7 attacks. 

CAIR became a subject of controversy in December 2023 when its executive director said publicly that he “was happy to see” Palestinians breaking out of Gaza on October 7 and that Israel, unlike Palestinians, had no right to self-defense. Those comments led the Biden Administration to disavow CAIR. 

The Anti-Defamation League has accused CAIR leadership of trafficking in “openly antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric,” noting that several organizational leaders were previously involved with an organization that funded Hamas.

While CAIR claimed that Harris’ support for Israel contributed to her loss, some pro-Palestine candidates found that anti-Israel rhetoric didn’t help them win. One such candidate, Taher Herzallah, lost his race for the board of commissioners in Anoka County, Minnesota, on Election Day. 

“Anybody who has any relationship or any support … or identifies themself as a Jewish person or a Christian Zionist, then we shall not be their friend. I will tell you that they are enemy number one, and our community needs to recognize that as such,” Herzallah said at a Zoom event days after October 7, 2023. 

National Republican strategist Brian Seitchik described antisemitism of this sort as “now a vein of the Democratic party.”

Herzallah’s opponent, Mandy Meisner, received 75% of the vote. “While it is a really strong statement that the other candidate trounced him in the election, it is concerning that he still received 25% of the vote in an American election,” an Israeli American Democrat who asked for her name to be withheld told The Media Line.

CAIR Minnesota, Herzallah’s home chapter, did not release a state endorsement list. A group of prominent Somali American imams in Minnesota endorsed Harris, and she won that state. 

Several other state chapters of CAIR did endorse down-ballot candidates, mostly Democrats, but it’s not clear how much influence those endorsements had. 

Michigan, another swing state with a large Muslim population, voted against Harris. CAIR’s exit poll of 502 Muslim voters in Michigan had Stein at 59%, Trump at 22%, and Harris at 14%. 

Emgage Action, another Muslim American advocacy organization, endorsed Harris despite “strong disagreement with President Biden over the crisis in the Middle East.” The group’s statement explained that the endorsement was meant “not an agreement with Vice President Harris on all issues, but rather, an honest guidance to our voters regarding the difficult choice they confront at the ballot box.”

“There are those who say that voting third-party will punish the Democrats and teach them a lesson, but our communities—both home and abroad—will be the ones punished and caused the most harm by another four years of Trump’s fascism,” Emgage Action wrote.

During his first term, Trump signed executive orders barring people from several Muslim countries from entering the United States. He has signaled that he will reinstate the travel ban when he gets back to the White House and that it will include Palestinians. 

“I will ban refugee resettlement from terror-infested areas like the Gaza Strip, and we will seal our border and bring back the travel ban,” Trump told an audience at the Israeli American Council’s National Summit in Washington, DC, on September 19, 2024.