(A Note: An academic and I are doing a series of deep data dives. For professional reasons, that academic wishes to remain anonymous. Maybe someday we’ll live in an era when professors can work without fear of losing their jobs, but we’re not there yet. In any case, the following may be too dry for some readers; others will find it enthralling. Enjoy!
–Ayaan)
It is often said that US elections revolve around domestic issues (“It’s the economy, stupid!”), with foreign policy generally relegated to an afterthought. By and large, polling bears this out: in 2022, for example, 31% of voters chose inflation as the top issue facing the country followed by abortion (27%) and crime (11%). Foreign policy came in a lowly 8th place in the exit poll, with just 2% of voters picking it as their most important concern. Similarly, voters in 2020 chose the economy (35%), racial inequality (20%), and the coronavirus (17%) as their top three concerns. In 2018, they prioritized health care (41%), immigration (23%) and the economy (22%). Foreign policy was the main concern of only 5% of voters, putting it in seventh place. You get the point. The last election focused on foreign affairs was back in 2006, when voters strongly disapproved of the war in Iraq.
Although critics of Joe Biden (rightly) note that he botched the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, got America embroiled in a stalemated proxy war in Ukraine, and squandered the peace in the Middle East he inherited from Trump, there’s a key difference between all of these flare-ups and the Bush era: U.S. fatalities. Back in 2006, dozens of U.S. service members were dying every month. While the U.S. has sent tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine and has just authorized another $61 billion, American troops are not dying or deployed there in large numbers. Perhaps those are critical requirements for an election in which foreign affairs play a major role. Another explanation might be the relative popularity of each war in the media. While Operation Iraqi Freedom was almost universally condemned by mainstream outlets, the Ukraine war is very popular.
On the face of it, this analysis suggests the Israel-Hamas war won’t play a major role in November. And the polling at this stage bears that out: only 2% of Americans identify it as the most important problem facing the U.S, compared to 28% for immigration, 14% for the economy, and 11% who pick inflation. This is especially true among the swing voters who determine election outcomes, for whom inflation and the economy are the top concerns. Nor does it rank highly when Americans are asked to rank critical threats to U.S. vital interests, coming in behind issues like cyberterrorism, nuclear proliferation and the rise of China. With all that said, it is an evolving situation that could yet develop into an election issue. Even without troop deployments (which, thankfully, seem very unlikely), there are at least three possible ways the war in Gaza could become a significant political problem for Biden without having to reach the top of most voters’ minds.
Swing States
The first is in swing states with significant Arab and Muslim populations.
In 2020 the American National Election Study shows that 86% of Muslim voters overall supported Joe Biden in the presidential election. Recent polling, however, suggests that his policy of backing Israel’s campaign is hurting him with Muslims. The Arab American Institute, for instance, found that only 17% of Arab Americans say they will vote for Biden in 2024, down from 59% who did so in 2020. This staggering drop is unparalleled anywhere else – even his drop among Hispanic voters pales in comparison.
Despite the fact that Muslims presently comprise only 1% of the total US population, they flexed their electoral muscles by launching the #AbandonBiden campaign last October when Biden made clear he wouldn’t call for an immediate ceasefire. As part of the campaign, some Muslims suggested they would organize to stop people voting for him in swing states with sizable Muslim-American communities such as Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia.
The potential electoral ramifications of this approach were made clear in the Michigan Democratic primary on March 2nd, in which 100,000 voters in the swing state cast a ballot for “uncommitted” rather than for Biden. This included 79 percent in majority Arab-American enclaves, particularly in Michigan’s Dearborn area. Similar attempts were made in other states; in Minnesota, for instance, about 20 percent of voters also cast ballots for “uncommitted.”
This might not sound like much, but those 100,000 Michiganders represented 13.3% of the total vote in a state that has had a run of close results. In 2016 Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a margin of just 10,704 votes (0.22% of the total); in 2020 Mr. Biden won by 154,188 (or 2.78%). As of 2020, there were an estimated 278,000 Arab-Americans in Michigan, and one of its cities, Dearborn, is believed to contain the largest number of Muslims and Arabs in the US. If the anti-Gaza backlash were to persist through November and 100,000 Democratic voters were still willing to spoil their ballots, he would as such find it very difficult to hold that crucial swing state.
Such marginal effects could be similarly important in other swing states. In 2020, Joe Biden won Georgia, a state with an Arab-American population of 57,000, by a margin of only 11,800 voters. He took Arizona, a state with an Arab-American population of 60,000, by only 10,500 votes. The Arab-American and Muslim vote could thus be a disproportionately important factor in the outcome of this year’s presidential election, and their political influence is growing with their numbers.
Would Muslims really be willing to back Donald Trump over Joe Biden given the Orange Man’s own strongly pro-Israel track record and the bans he imposed on immigration from several majority-Muslim countries? Perhaps, if the war in Gaza continues to result in death and destruction for Palestinians in the months running up to the election. More likely, they would just stay home. But if the war fades away and a cease-fire goes into effect, the intensity of feeling among Muslim might well abate to the point that they consider Biden the lesser of two evils.
Depressing Turnout in the Broader Electorate
Anger at Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war could be key in swing states that president won in 2020 by a slim margin in another respect: by depressing turnout among non-Muslim Democratic-leaning Americans.
Traditionally, the US has been a staunch supporter of Israel. In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack on October 7th, there was a great deal of sympathy for the Israeli side of the conflict. But after narrowly backing Israel’s military action in Gaza in November, Americans now oppose the campaign by a solid margin. Fifty-five percent currently disapprove of Israel’s actions, while 36% approve.
Change among young Democrats has been particularly notable: They are now twice as likely to view Biden as “too pro-Israel” than they were in October. The number of those saying they would be less likely to vote for Biden because of his stance on the Israeli-Palestinian issue more than doubled since October, and those who want the United States to lean toward the Palestinians have measurably increased.
In February, Gallup polling likewise identified a significant drop in support for Israel. It noted that “young adults show the biggest decline in ratings of Israel, dropping from 64% favorable among 18- to 34-year-olds in 2023 to 38%. Middle-aged adults (those aged 35 to 54) show a smaller but still significant drop, from 66% to 55%.”
Democrats’ widespread opposition to Israel’s actions underscores the difficulty of the issue for President Joe Biden among his most loyal supporters. Biden’s approval rating for his handling of the situation in the Middle East, at 27%, is his lowest among five issues tested in the survey. This is because far fewer Democrats (47%) approve of how he is handling the situation between the Israelis and Palestinians than approve of his handling of the economy, the environment, energy policy and foreign affairs, broadly. On those issues, no less than 66% of Democrats approve of Biden.
It could hurt the president by dampening turnout among would-be Biden voters who care deeply about the issue and are upset with his handling of the situation.
These findings raise an interesting question as to why young Americans and Democrats are much more sympathetic to the Palestinians than their older Republican counterparts. There are probably several reasons why this has happened, including the shift in Israel’s domestic political climate towards the religious right, the declining importance of the Middle East to US interests in an age of energy independence and the demoralizing legacy of US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. A couple of other domestic factors have likely also played a role that will jeopardize the Democratic Party’s support for the US-Israel relationship in the longer term.
One is the demographic shift in the composition of the electorate. As a generalization, non-white voters are keener on withdrawing US military support to Israel than white ones and have cooler views of Jews overall. As they make up a much larger and rapidly expanding share of the youth cohort than of those middle aged and older, it is unsurprising that it is this group that is least sympathetic to the Israelis overall in the current conflict.
The other related issue is the radicalization of white liberals over the last decade. As Zach Goldberg has documented, the last decade has seen a “reversal of white liberal attitudes toward Israel. Between 1978 and 2014, white liberals consistently reported sympathizing more with Israel than the Palestinians. Since March of 2016, this trend has turned on its face. Currently, significantly more white liberals report greater sympathy for the Palestinians than for Israel.” This cross-over can be seen below:
He speculates that the negative turn in white liberal attitudes towards Israel is part and parcel to the broader hard left shift in racial attitudes over the last decade – what he elsewhere dubs the “Great Awokening.” While white liberals still express favorable views of Jews, they are nonetheless perceived to be privileged in comparison to other minority groups. Other groups higher up on the intersectional totem pole (those less contaminated by association with whiteness) now have priority: “So long as anti-Semitism has a white face to it, there is no problem here. But if the face is actually that of a member from an ‘oppressed’ or ‘vulnerable’ group, there may be a cognitive dissonance.” Just as a “white supremacist” America is alleged to hold down its “people of color” with ever more invisible systems of oppression, so too the Jews, having recovered from their historic victimization, emerge as the default oppressor in a “Zionist supremacist” state of Israel.
These two factors overlap, as younger non-white and white liberal voters have both come to see the current conflict through the prism of woke ideology: A colonial war pitting a white Israeli settler state against the oppressed darker skinned Palestinians. For all the flaws of this dichotomous ideology, it is nonetheless an impression that has unfortunately been exacerbated by some instances of Israeli settlers engaged in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and by incendiary comments from some hard right ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition egging it on.
1968 All Over Again?
Amid mounting pressure from this activist base and progressive members of Congress, Biden has become increasingly critical of Netanyahu and made more public gestures of support for Palestinians, such as abstaining in a UN Security Council vote calling for a ceasefire.
So far, however, these moves have failed to quell unrest among progressives. This leads me to the last respect in which the Gaza conflict may yet impact the election. Last week, dozens of Left-wing organizations warned that they were planning to disrupt the coming Democratic National Convention with what one activist called a “1968 kind of welcome,” a reference to the violent disruption that took place outside the DNC in Chicago that year. Elsewhere, college campuses have been rattled by anti-Israel protests since October 7th, prompting two Congressional hearings over campus antisemitism. More than 100 pro-Palestine protesters were arrested at Columbia this week, the latest in a streak of unruly protests that have spread to Yale and USC among others. See Restoration’s earlier article for commentary on the matter.
It remains to be seen for how long these will go on, or whether the DNC will be disrupted on the scale of ‘68, but any such escalation of direct action could end up dividing the left between moderates and progressives ahead of November, alienate influential supporters and donors, and create a general sense of chaos that will disturb centrists. For conservatives, this presents an opportunity to make the left own its radical faction and to appear relatively sane and functional by comparison, so long as they do not overreact against genuinely peaceful protests. See Chris Rufo’s Substack for more.
As we argued at the outset, history still suggests the 2024 elections are more likely to be dominated by domestic issues (immigration and the economy) than by foreign policy. Nonetheless, Gaza still has tremendous potential to damage President Biden in the ways I’ve outlined: by dampening Muslim turnout in swing states like Michigan, by suppressing turnout of would-be Biden voters who care deeply about the issue more broadly, especially among the young, and by setting the party up for months of potentially embarrassing displays by their radical-progressive faction on America’s campuses.