Did Gaza War Cost Kamala Harris The US Election? Explaining How Michigan Voted

The race to the White House this year was extremely close, with polls showing a tight contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump till the very end of the campaign trail. However, as the results started trickling in on election night, a shock awaited the Democratic Party. The 2024 loss for Democrats was historic in many ways - and none of them are worth being proud of. It marked the first time in 20 years the Democrats lost the popular vote to the Republican party - the last Republican president to carry the popular vote was George W Bush in 2004. Secondly, it showed that the Republican party, led by President-elect Donald Trump, had made inroads in several Democrat strongholds. While the condition of a path to the White House for Trump rested on flipping the Blue Wall states, the inroads he made in New York, Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida, especially with Black and Latino voters, was noteworthy. Michigan, in particular, was a case in point as the strong Arab population in the state shifted decisively against the Biden-Harris administration, which contributed greatly to how the state flipped. Though Pennsylvania was the nail in the coffin of Harris' hopes for a stint at the White House on Election Night, it was Michigan which ultimately ended up calling the race in favour of Trump. Since the war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, the United States, led by President Joe Biden and VP Kamala Harris has provided billions of dollars in funding and weapons to Israel to 'defend itself.' However, the death of over 42,000 people in Gaza, as per the UN and Gaza's health ministry, has not sat well with many Americans, especially the Arabs. Michigan has the most number of Arabs among all states in the United States. And it played a crucial role in delivering the state to Joe Biden in the 2020 elections. But the political temperament of the American Arabs has been shifting, especially with the vehement criticism that has come from the Arab Americans over the US aid to Israel, even as the International Court of Justice investigates a plausible genocide by Israel in the Gaza Strip. The shift of the Arab population against Kamala Harris was evident even before the election results were announced. There were reports of several Arab American activists from Michigan who campaigned against Kamala Harris. Some also went as far as to ask fellow Arab Americans to vote for Trump. Furthermore, in the last few days of her campaign, Harris started almost all her speech with the Israel-Gaza war, trying to address this shift.Also read: And how exactly the equation played out in the ballots is evident from the case of Dearborn - the Michigan city where 55% of the residents are from the Middle Eastern countries. As per the available media projections, Trump won nearly 42.5% of the votes in Dearborn, compared to 36.26% of Harris. While these numbers explain a favourability of Trump in the city, the fact that the anti-incumbency against Harris was stronger is evident from Green Party candidate Jill Stein receiving a whooping 18% votes in Dearborn, as opposed to a national average of just 0.4%. What's even more concerning for the Blue Party is that Dearborn is not an exception. In Dearborn Heights, Trump defeated Harris by a margin of less than 4% while Jill Stein got around 15% of the votes. In fact, in Michigan, Harris only managed to win Kent County, Wayne County, Washtenaw County, Ingham County and Kalamazoo County. Trump bagged 49.8% of the votes in state, taking all 15 of the electoral votes, while Harris won 48.3%. Curiously, Jill Stein's percentage in the state was double that of her national average, at 0.8%, while Robert F Kennedy Jr and Chase Oliver bagged a combined 1.1% of votes.Also read: In the 2020 elections, President Biden secured 50.62% of votes from the state while Trump got 47.84%. In that election, the Green Party managed only 0,25% votes, while the Libertarians managed 1.09%. Before the US election in November, perhaps the biggest event in the US this year has been the Pro-Palestinian protests across the universities against the war in Gaza. It seems that the ghosts of Palestine have come back to haunt the Democratic Party in 2024. And when it did, there was no looking back. "Despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government’s all-out war against the Palestinian people, which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children," Vermont's Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders said in his post-election statement. "And the Americans are right," in their verdict, Sanders added.