NEW YORK - Latest opinion polls show Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican challenger Donald Trump locked in a tight race after the two leaders made their closing pitches for the US presidency over the weekend as Americans go to polls on Tuesday, with Muslim voters split on the candidates.
In the past, American-Muslims were a solidly Democratic voting bloc, especially in the years following 9/11 and given Trump’s overtly anti-Muslim rhetoric. But they are very angry with the Biden administration – and, by extension, Ms. Harris, the vice president – for its blind support for Israel. Now a section of American-Muslims seem willing to overlook Trump’s history of closeness with Israel’s hard-right leaders. “If, and when, they say, when I’m president, the US will once again be stronger and closer [to Israel] than it ever was,” Trump said last week. “I will support Israel’s right to win its war.”
Yet some national polls show the Muslim-Americans slightly favouring the former president; others are increasingly vocal in support of the third outfit in the field — Green party’s Jill Stein, a socialist who has been sharply critical of US blind to Israel and the genocidal war against Gaza.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani-American Public Affairs Committee (PAKPAC USA) has already endorsed Donald Trump, the former president.
According to the new poll released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), topping the list of candidates now is neither Ms. Harris nor Trump, but Ms. Stein of the Green Party who has garnered a majority of the Muslim vote.
Ms. Stein leads with 42% of the Muslim vote versus Ms. Harris at 41% and Trump at 10%. With a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points, however, that puts Ms. Stein in a dead heat with Ms. Harris, just as the two were in CAIR’s August survey when Ms. Harris had a slight lead with 29.4% of the Muslim vote to Ms. Stein’s 29.1%. Support for Trump dropped slightly from August, where the former president totalled 11.2%.
On Sunday last, Ms. Harris had spoken at a historically Black church and to Muslim-Americans in battleground Michigan on Sunday, while Trump embraced sharp rhetoric at a rally in Pennsylvania.
More than 78 million Americans have already done so ahead of Tuesday’s Election Day, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, opens new tab, approaching half the total 160 million votes cast in 2020, in which US voter turnout was the highest in more than a century.
Control of US Congress is also up for grabs on Tuesday, with Republicans favoured to capture a majority in the Senate while Democrats are seen as having an even chance of flipping Republicans’ narrow majority in the House of Representatives. Presidents whose parties fail to control both chambers have struggled to pass major legislation.
“In just two days we have the power to decide the fate of our nation for generations to come,” Ms. Harris told parishioners at Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ in Detroit. “We must act. It’s not enough to only pray; not enough to just talk.”
Later in a rally in East Lansing, Michigan, she addressed the state’s 200,000 Arab Americans, starting her speech with a nod to civilian victims of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
“This year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon, it is devastating. And as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza,” Harris said to applause.
Many Arab and Muslim Americans as well as anti-war activist groups have condemned US support for Israel amid the tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza and Lebanon, and the displacement of millions.
Trump visited Dearborn, Michigan, the heart of the Arab American community, on Friday and vowed to end the conflict in the Middle East without saying how.
Instead of mentioning Trump by name, Ms. Harris chose to highlight her opponent’s record during her last Sunday speeches on the campaign trail.
Trump, at his first of three rallies on Sunday, frequently abandoned his teleprompter with off-the-cuff remarks in which he denounced opinion polls showing movement for Ms. Harris. He called Democrats a “demonic party,” ridiculed Democratic President Joe Biden and talked about the high price of apples.
Trump, who survived an assassination attempt in July when a gunman’s bullet grazed his ear in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Sunday complained to supporters about gaps in the bulletproof glass surrounding him as he spoke and mused that an assassin would have to shoot through the news media to get him.
“To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news and I don’t mind that so much,” said Trump, who has long criticized the media and sought to rile public sentiment against them.
He later spoke in Kinston, North Carolina, and in Macon, Georgia, where he seized on last week’s jobs report that showed the US economy only produced 12,000 jobs last month.
He told a large crowd gathered in an amphitheater that the report showed that the United States was a “nation in decline” and he warned darkly without evidence of a potentially looming repeat of the 1929 Great Depression with “people jumping off buildings.”
Senior Harris campaign officials have said her closing argument is designed to reach a narrow slice of undecided voters. That stood in contrast to Trump, who varied little from his standard speech aimed at inspiring his loyal supporters.
“Kamala’s campaign is run on hate and demonization,” Trump said.