Wednesday, November 1, 2:00 PM EDT

Join Jim to discuss this week's column, Can Biden Win Back Arab American Voters? (portions of the article below; link to full article at bottom)

(Recent polling shows) that there has been a dramatic decline in Arab American support for President Joseph Biden and that his handling of Israel’s continued devastation of Gaza is the reason for this shift in attitudes.

When asked how they would vote in the 2024 elections, only 17% say they would cast a ballot for Biden, in marked contrast to the 59% who voted for him in 2020. The president’s approval rating among Arab Americans also plummeted from 74% in 2020 to 29% in this year's poll….

…there have only been two other moments where policy issues have resulted in such a dramatic shift in Arab American views—and neither of them produced such a change over such a short period of time. The first was during the Bush years when over a period of four years Arab Americans moved decisively against the president’s policies in Iraq and his repressive domestic agenda of violating civil liberties and his party’s negative stereotyping of Arab Americans and American Muslims. The second was in 2016 when Arab Americans recoiled in the face of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric against Muslims. In the case of President Biden, while Arab American attitudes toward his job performance declined on a par with the rest of American voters, the precipitous drop over a few weeks time in support for his reelection and even his party has been unprecedented.

Arab Americans may not be as numerous as some other constituencies, but their hundreds of thousands of voters in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania were actively courted by the 2020 Biden campaign. For him to win them back in 2024 will be an uphill climb.

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Read the full column: Can Biden Win Back Arab American Voters? (aaiusa.org)