Despite the Democrats losing the popular vote in the election to the Republicans for the first time since 2004 – and by more than five million votes – many pro-Kamala Harris social media users aimed their frustrations at pro-Palestine voters, specifically Arabs and Muslims, on Wednesday.
Although many Arab and Muslim Americans voted for the Green Party’s Jill Stein, she received only 0.4 percent of the national total, amounting to 628,525 votes. This is less than half of what Stein received in 2016 when she received 1,449,370 votes.
Former President Donald Trump overperformed across the electorate. The Financial Times reported that Trump gained ground in all but two states, specifically among those in the working class who care most about the economy and immigration.
https://x.com/wyattreed13/status/1854093886097965288
Even if Harris had managed to win Michigan in the electoral college, which is home to a significant Muslim and Arab voting bloc, she would have still lost the election.
“Asian, Black, Hispanic and white voters all moved towards Trump. “Harris only increased her vote share among the over-65s and with white college-educated women,” the FT report said.
A lot of the liberal critique of the outcome has fallen on the shoulders of those who abandoned the Democrats for Trump or third-party candidates, in response to the party’s ongoing military and financial support for Israel and refusal to engage in any conversation on an arms embargo.
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One X account user posted: “Fuck Gaza at this point! And I mean that from the bottom of my ass! They at harris rally screaming every time she speak and never at a trump rally! Good! Let Israel run wild on them.”
Many have posted that they hope Gaza is made into a parking lot as punishment.
One post that has over 200 thousand likes on X, says: “if you voted third party, fuck you.”
In response to this, many Arab and Muslim social media users have pointed out that the amount of votes for third parties was minuscule in comparison to Trump’s nearly five million lead in the popular vote.
Others online pointed out other voter demographics that increased and supported Trump, like young white men.
Arab social media users also recounted the times that the Harris campaign belittled their asks of the Democratic Party and insulted many in the community.
Others highlighted other potential downfalls in the Harris-Walz campaign for the American public in general, like their lack of focus on inflation and the economy.
“In the last four years, American food prices have gone up by 22%,” a post with over 10 thousand likes on X reads. “I’m sorry, but running a campaign on the threat to democracy when people are unable to afford staple groceries was completely bonkers.”
In contrast to those who have pointed out that Arab and Muslim “protest votes” made little impact on the outcome of the election, other pro-Palestine social media users see Harris’s loss as a direct link to her role in Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.
In the city of Dearborn, Michigan, for example (which is home to the most prominent Arab-American population in the country) Harris lost to a voting population that has always been historically blue. This year, Trump won 55 percent of the city’s vote compared to Harris’s 42.48 percent. Stein also received a large share of the votes, with more than 18 percent.
Despite the Democratic loss there, Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib won her fourth term without endorsing Harris as the presidential candidate. Academic Eman Abdelhadi took to X to say that this was a testament to the fact that Arabs do have electoral power but were “actively lost by the Democrats who chose to ignore and patronize them”.
Many echoed this sentiment, saying that the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for the loss.
