Report
Poll: Biden’s and Harris’s support for Israel’s genocide was decisive in their defeat
A new YouGov poll makes it clear that Biden's support for Israel's relentless assault on Gaza played a surprisingly large role in many Democratic voters' choice not to vote.
The fragile Gaza ceasefire agreement was hailed by Joe Biden in his farewell speech, but there was not a peep from him or from Kamala Harris about the fact that it was the Palestinian issue that made Trump win.
From 2020 to 2024, Democrats showed a staggering decline in support for the president, with about 19 million people who had voted for Joe Biden in 2020 staying home in 2024.
Now, a new YouGov poll makes it clear that Biden's support for Israel's relentless assault on Gaza played a surprisingly large role in many Democratic voters' choice not to vote.
Higher than the economy (24 percent) and immigration (11 percent), Gaza (29 percent) was the main reason cited by non-voters to justify their abstention in November.
In Michigan counties and cities where the Muslim community is particularly prominent, e.g. Dearborn and Wayne County, the gap compared to 2020 is very striking. As Mario Del Pero wrote in Acoma magazine, “In Dearborn, where more than half of the 110,000 residents are of Middle Eastern descent, Trump prevailed with 42.5 percent of the vote; Harris got 36.3 percent compared to Biden's 69 percent in 2020 (while 18 percent went to the Green candidate, Jill Stein). In absolute terms, in Dearborn Harris got less than half the votes that went to Biden four years earlier. Across the state, Harris lost more than 70,000 votes from 2020, where Trump gained 170,000; of those 70,000, a large majority (60,000) are from Wayne County, where much of the Arab-American population is concentrated.”
Before one can claim to prove with certainty that Gaza cost the Democrats the election, it is important to also keep a number of other factors in mind.
Even if October 7 and the resulting genocide had never happened, it is possible that a number of Americans disappointed with President Biden would still not have voted and would have cited a different reason for their abstentionism. Picking the “most important reason” for not voting is not the same as saying that a certain issue was the “only reason” for their choice.
An earlier poll, conducted during the election campaign, had already clearly found that Kamala Harris would have greatly benefited from breaking with Biden on Gaza and deciding to put real pressure on Israel. But Harris chose not to do so.
Distancing herself from Biden on Gaza could have had ripple effects on other campaign issues as well, since Harris could never clearly answer a question that had plagued her since the Democratic Convention: What would she have done differently than Biden? Or what would she do differently in the future? In the end, Kamala settled for an obviously unsatisfactory non-answer: “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency. And like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences and fresh and new ideas.”
Of course, distancing himself from Biden on Gaza would have risked losing voters who supported the pro-Israel policy. But a careful analysis of the poll suggests that the risk would have been low compared to the potential gains.
Voters who supported Biden in 2020 and went on to support Harris in 2024 were asked whether they would be more or less enthusiastic about voting for Harris if she broke with Biden on Gaza. 35 percent answered that this would make them more enthusiastic about voting for her, and only 5 percent said it would make them less enthusiastic.
According to the new YouGov poll, the Gaza issue had the greatest impact in Arizona (38 percent citing it as the main reason for not voting), Michigan (32 percent) and Wisconsin (32 percent), and smallest in Pennsylvania (only 19 percent), as well as Nevada (13 percent) and Georgia (6 percent). Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were the three swing states that were decisive in giving Trump his victory. And in the end, Netanyahu gave him a gift in the form of a fragile truce stopping the bombings.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/addio-biden-e-harris-lappoggio-a-israele-decisivo-per-la-disfatta on 2025-01-19