 "Did Democrats take Latinos and Muslim voters for granted? What US election results say")
On Tuesday, November 5, the Democrats received a major setback after the party’s presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris lost the highly anticipated US presidential election to the Republican Party’s pick Donald Trump. The 78-year-old president-elect created history after he became the first US President in over a century to come back to the White House after losing his re-election bid the first time.
While pollsters and election forecasters were predicting the race to be close, some of them even giving Harris an edge, Trump managed to clinch a landslide victory, winning all the 7 swing states. This meant that the business-mogul-turned-politician managed to infiltrate the “blue wall” of the Democrats.
The setback was so severe that the Republicans also managed to flip the Senate in their favour and are expected to retain their majority in the US House of Representatives. While some Democrats blamed US President Joe Biden for the loss, with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi saying the POTUS’s delayed exit from the race cost the Democrats the election, the party forgot one of the major factors that contributed to their loss.
Two groups played a key role in changing the tide of the polls because they felt neglected by the party they sought refuge in the past. They were the Latinos and Arab / Muslim voters. While for the Latinos the economy and immigration became the top issues, Muslim and Arab voters were miffed with the Biden administration’s tackling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Here’s how Democrats took the Latinos and Muslim/Arab voters for granted.
Why did Latinos swing dramatically towards Trump
- How Harris and Trump performed among the Latino voters
One of the biggest stories of the 2024 presidential race was the fact that Latino voters swung towards Trump by a staggering 25 percentage points, compared to what the figures were four years ago.
According to the data released by NBC News, Trump won the support of 43 per cent of Latino voters across the United States, while 53 per cent voted for Harris. While on the surface it shows that the majority of Latinos voted for Harris, things become interesting when we compare the recent figures to the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsIn 2020, Trump won only 32 per cent of votes to Joe Biden’s 65 per cent among the community. Not only this, the 2024 race became one of the GOP’s strongest performances among Latinos in a presidential race since George W. Bush carried 44 per cent in 2004.
It is pertinent to note that Latinos account for 12 per cent of the electorate and Trump’s performance in this section of voters helped to improve his margins across a host of battleground states, from Pennsylvania to Arizona, which complicated Harris’ path. Trump’s major gains were fueled by a massive shift among Latino men, who backed him over Harris by 10 points.
- What was the reason behind the shift?
Shortly after Harris formally conceded defeat to Trump, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders issued a statement in which he mentioned how the Democratic Party abandoned the working class, especially the Latino voters. “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders wrote in his post on X, formally known as Twitter.
“First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right,” he added. The economy was one of the main issues for Latino voters.
It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 6, 2024
While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.
And they’re right. pic.twitter.com/lM2gSJmQFL
Latino support for the Democratic Party has been declining since 2012. In that election, 71 per cent of Hispanic voters backed former President Barack Obama, 66 per cent voted for Hillary Clinton and 65 per cent voted for Joe Biden. Just like the rest of the country, the Latino population are struggling with the high cost of living, housing and food.
The population felt betrayed and neglected by the Biden administration (whose Harris is a part of). Before the November 5 elections, multiple polls predicted that the vast majority of Latino voters were confident that Trump would handle economic issues better than Harris. While the Hispanic poverty rate has declined in recent years, Latino communities remain among the poorest in the nation.
“Nothing’s changed in terms of what the Latino electorate wants,” Matt Tuerk, the first Latino mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania, one of the key states Harris lost to Trump, told Politico. “They still want opportunity. What they’re saying with their vote, if the exit polls are to be believed, is they don’t believe that the plans that were offered by Vice President Harris would give them that opportunity," he added.
When it comes to immigration the top concern of the Latino community still stands at establishing legal pathways to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. However, Harris kept focusing on the importance of border security. What made Latinos more disenchanted by the VP was when she declined to denounce Trump’s proposed plan to expel 11 million undocumented immigrants. Hence, for them, it became a matter of choosing the best from the worst.
How the Gaza War became a key issue for Muslim/Arab voters
- How Harris and Trump performed among the Muslim / Arab community
The Muslim electorate in the US is estimated to comprise over one million voters who form a substantial voting bloc in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Trump managed to win in all three states. In the state of Michigan, Harris received at least 22,000 fewer votes than Biden did four years ago.
Meanwhile, Trump made small gains – about 9,000 votes – across the area with an Arab majority, suggesting Harris’s loss there is more attributable to Arab Americans either not voting or casting ballots for third-party candidates. In this case, Jill Stein was the third-party candidate who gained significant support from Muslim/Arab voters.
Stein, leader of the Green Party, who prioritised ending Israel’s war on Gaza and its occupation of the West Bank, secured just over 44,000 votes in Michigan and over 600,000 nationally. However, neither result was enough to prevent Harris from losing nationally or in key swing states. So what was the reason behind the VP’s poor performance?
- Support from Cheneys and overall neglect
In late October, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a poll which showed that 42 per cent of Muslim voters favoured third-party candidate Stein while 41 per cent favoured Harris. What should have been concerning for Democrats is the fact that 98 per cent of Muslims polled in the same survey said that they disapprove of how Biden had handled the war in Gaza.
While initially, Harris put forward a strong stance, calling for an immediate ceasefire and telling Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu that the “US won’t be silent,” her stance on the matter soon started to fade.
Supporters of the Palestinian cause also felt betrayed when none of the pro-Palestinian politicians were invited to speak at the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC). In the midst of this, with just three days left to the upcoming US presidential elections, Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib declined to endorse the vice president. “Don’t underestimate the power you all have,” Tlaib told a get-out-the-vote United Auto Workers rallygoers at that time.
Democrats also gave a platform to Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney and Former Vice President Dick Cheney. However, this did not sit well with the Arab and Muslim voters. Dick Cheney who served under the Bush administration was an early proponent of invading Iraq. He went on to allege that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction program in the country, which eventually turned out to be untrue.
Cheney’s policy eventually caused immense human suffering and with them endorsing Harris and Democrats inviting them to speak at rallies, Muslims and Arabs in the US felt betrayed. While all this was happening the Trump-Vance campaign slammed the Cheney family and pushed an anti-war rhetoric.
“Why would Muslims support Lying Kamala Harris when she embraces Muslim hating and very dumb person, Liz Cheney,” asked Trump. “Her father brought years of war and death to the Middle East. He killed many Arabs, many, many Arabs and Muslims,” he added to rapturous approval.
While Democrats continue to play the blame game, the crux of the matter remains that the party took the Latinos, blacks and Muslims for granted, thinking that they would invariably vote for Harris over Trump. Harris continued to stand on the same Biden policies which already did not sit well with both the communities. As the party has lost dominance in the White House, Senate and the House, it is time for them to introspect, exactly what went wrong in the 2024 presidential elections.
With inputs from agencies.
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