Some Pro-Palestinian voters say they can't vote for Harris. Will it make a difference?

DURHAM, North Carolina – Nadeen Bir says she isn't budging: Kamala Harris won’t get her vote in 2024 unless the Democratic presidential nominee commits to stop sending weapons to Israel.

The 44-year-old Palestinian-American grew up in the United States and now lives in North Carolina, where she has otherwise been a reliable Democratic voter. Her father was forced to leave Jaffa as a child during the 1948 displacement and war that founded the modern nation of Israel, and her mother was pushed out years later in the 1967 war. She still has family in the West Bank, where she says they live with constant fear.

“I feel conflicted because I know about splitting the vote and how that puts us at risk of having (Donald) Trump as president,” she said of the Republican nominee and former president.

“But it’s not going to be our fault if Kamala loses," she added, saying she cannot morally support someone who hasn't done more to stop the mass deaths in Gaza.

Bir spoke with USA TODAY on a sunny September day in Durham, where around a dozen people with the group Mothers for Ceasefire gathered at a busy street corner during the morning commute. Two toddlers sat in a stroller, munching on Goldfish crackers and swinging their legs as the adults around them waved signs in support of Palestine. Many cars driving through the left-leaning city honked back in support, while one woman in athletic gear jogged by and yelled at the protesters: "Get a life!"

Kelly Harris Perin, another member of Mothers for Ceasefire, said she's "disappointed" in Harris and doesn't think the incumbent vice president has shown she's willing to do more than President Joe Biden to stop the conflict.

"But I'm not a single-issue voter," Harris Perin said. Healthcare, abortion rights, education and gender-affirming care are all top priorities for her as well.

"We can't afford another Trump presidency," she said. She plans to support and even volunteer for Harris while she keeps pushing for peace in Gaza. "I hope that those things are not mutually exclusive."

Bir and Harris Perin are among the voters in key swing states who voted “uncommitted” last March in the Democratic presidential primary, when Biden had no serious primary challenger in his bid for reelection, to register their frustration with the incumbent's handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Many of those voters are now determining how – or whether – they will vote in the presidential election.

In North Carolina, more than 88,000 people voted uncommitted in the primary. Trump beat Biden by just under 75,000 votes in that state in 2020. Pollsters say it is likely to be even closer this year.

In Michigan, which has the largest percentage of Arab Americans of any state in the country, more than 101,000 voters cast an uncommitted ballot in the Democratic primary. Biden beat Trump by around 154,000 votes there in 2020.

Winning at least one or both of these states is likely to be crucial for Harris or Trump to find a path to victory.

The latest conflict in the Middle East began just over a year ago, when Hamas entered Israel and killed more than 1,200 people and took around 250 people hostage into Gaza, according to Israeli officials. Israel responded with air and ground raids that have killed more than 41,500 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, many of whom are women and children.

Israel recently also launched airstrikes and a ground invasion into southern Lebanon against Hezbollah, which began firing missiles into Israel last year in support of Hamas. On Sunday, Biden announced the United States would be sending 100 troops to Israel to operate an advanced anti-missile system.

The war has deepened fissures within the Democratic Party and sparked a wave of campus protests in the lead up to the presidential election, which now features Harris instead of Biden and remains in a statistical dead heat. A tiny sliver of the electorate in select battleground states is likely to determine the outcome.

When Biden dropped out of the race in July, some of those voters who were frustrated with his Israel policy appeared more open to supporting Harris, saying she struck a different tone on the conflict despite not substantively deviating from Biden on policy.

But as November nears, thousands of people are deciding whether they think she has done enough to distinguish her position on the issue from that of her boss. Pro-Palestinian organizers and voting advocates say their support – or lack thereof – may still be able to swing the election.

“It’s a bit of a muddled picture,” said former Rep. Andy Levin, D-Mich., who was an early advocate of the uncommitted movement in his state and who is now urging voters to support Harris. It’s been made even more complicated by the war's expansion into Lebanon, as Michigan is home to one of the largest communities of Lebanese Americans in the U.S.

“So that is problematic,” he said. “It’s a storm. We have to find our way through.”

For almost a year, the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah has intensified firing of rockets into northern Israel. Tensions on that border have also increased since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.

U.S. officials are concerned that a ratcheting up of tensions between Hezbollah, a U.S. designated terror group, and Israel could lead to a broader regional conflict in the Middle East and have been trying to negotiate a cease-fire.

Shift at the top of the Democratic ticket

In the year since the Oct. 7 attack, Biden has largely stood by Israel in public even in the face of intense pressure from the left flank of his party, informed in part by his long history with the country.

He has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to limit civilian casualties, said he isn’t doing enough to bring home Israeli hostages and used strong language as he cajoled Netanyahu behind the scenes. In May, he paused the shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel.

But the destruction in Gaza and the Biden administration’s link to it drew backlash from young, progressive, Arab and Muslim voters who have made up important portions of the Democratic base in past elections. The “uncommitted” initiative sought to show Biden their electoral power during the primary to push for a change in policy, with limited success.

Many of those voters were considering sitting out the general election too, said Our Revolution Executive Director Joseph Geervarghese, a political action committee that has helped urge progressive followers to vote uncommitted.

But when Biden dropped out of the presidential race and threw his support behind Harris, the dynamic appeared to shift, said Geervarghese, whose organization was launched by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the wake of his unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign to further progressive causes.

Biden was clearly pro-Israel, he said. “I feel like Harris is signaling that she is a little more even-handed in how she analyzes” the issue.

Harris has repeatedly said she supports Israel’s right to self-defense, and her campaign rebuffed efforts from activists protesting outside Chicago's United Center to get a Palestinian American a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention.

In her run for the White House, Harris has won over a cross section of foreign policy experts, including defense hawks like former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, as well as Sanders, who has publicly criticized the Biden administration's handling of the war in Gaza, but has endorsed and is campaigning for Harris.

Like Bir, leaders in the uncommitted movement have pushed Harris to commit to stop sending arms to Israel. However, the campaign has said she will not consider an arms embargo. "I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself," she said during the September presidential debate with Trump.

But Harris also called for a cease-fire early this year, has supported a two-state solution, and has spoken of a Palestinian right to “dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.” These are positions that Biden said he shares as well.

Among “our base, there’s probably a little bit more openness because of this signaling and because she’s not Biden,” Geervarghese said. “However, there has not been enough to give people confidence that she is going to fully pursue peace.”

Because of that, he said, “there’s a real possibility” uncommitted voters could swing the election in key states like Michigan.

James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute and a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee, was one of the first national Democratic advocates to publicly stake out a plan to replace Biden following his disastrous debate performance in late June.

He is bullish that Harris will have a different approach to the war than Biden has – not only because of her public statements, but because her campaign is putting resources into reaching out to both Arab and Muslim communities in a way that the Biden administration never did, he said.

“The Biden administration was the most frustrating Democratic administration I’ve ever dealt with,” Zogby said. “I just don’t understand how they’ve behaved, not just on this, but their insular nature.”

An opening for both Trump and Harris

Arab Americans have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats for decades, according to the Arab American Institute.

But the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza has chipped away at that support and even driven some voters to Trump, according to a recent 500-person survey from the group. The poll found Arab American voters evenly split between the two presidential candidates and parties. Almost 20% identified as independent.

“In our thirty years of polling Arab American voters, we have not witnessed anything like the role that the war on Gaza is having on voter behavior,” the pollsters wrote in their analysis of the findings.

That doesn’t appear to be lost on the Harris campaign. Harris met with Muslim and Arab American leaders in Michigan earlier this month, where she "expressed her concern over the scale of suffering in Gaza," according to the campaign. A few days beforehand, her national security advisor met with Arab, Muslim and Palestinian leaders, and Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz told Muslim advocates the war in Gaza “must end.”

Harris "will continue working to bring the war in Gaza to an end in a way where Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination," said Nasrina Bargzie, the Harris campaign's director of Muslim and Arab American outreach.

The Trump campaign, too, sees possibilities in the narrow opening among Muslim and Arab American voters by pitching peace in the Middle East, despite past policies that still scare some voters. The campaign has courted community leaders and voters and won the endorsement of the mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, the first Muslim-majority city in the U.S. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found swing state voters preferred Trump over Harris in handling the Israel-Hamas war by 15 percentage points.

In a statement to USA TODAY, Trump campaign senior advisor Brian Hughes alleged Biden and Harris have "brought death, chaos and war" to the Middle East. "Only President Trump will restore peace and stability in the Middle East for all people and he will protect religious freedom for all Americans," he said.

As president, Trump was supportive of Netanyahu's government. On the campaign trail, he has said he would be Israel's "protector." He has also criticized Jewish Americans for supporting Democrats and suggested they would be to blame if he loses the election. His son-in-law and former adviser, Jared Kushner, has said Gaza's "waterfront property" could be "very valuable," and said Israel should "move the people out and then clean it up."

Many groups that have been vocal pro-Palestinian advocates have recently endorsed Harris, arguing that a Trump presidency would pose a greater danger to their cause, including the largest Muslim American voter advocacy group in the country, Emgage Action.

“If we are serious about advancing our anti-war goals and agenda and pushing for peace in the Middle East, including supporting Palestinian self-determination beyond just ending the war in Gaza, we just see no pathway for that to happen under a Trump presidency,” Emgage Action CEO Wa’el Alzayat told USA TODAY.

The Uncommitted National Movement released a statement last month saying it could not endorse Harris, but said it opposes a Trump presidency and doesn’t recommend voting third party, as that could deliver a Trump victory. Spokespeople for the movement did not respond to multiple requests for an interview for this story.

Zogby of the Arab American Institute and Alzayat of Emgage both said they are working to show Arab and Muslim voters that a vote for Harris is both strategic and ethical, given the damage a second Trump administration could do.

“I’ve been telling people, we have a right to be angry, but we don’t have the luxury of being angry,” said Zogby. “For some groups to say we have to teach Democrats a lesson – that’s so irresponsible. It’s petulant and it’s dangerous.”

Determining the chances

It’s tough to determine exactly how many people are still making up their mind in the 2024 White House race. A USA TODAY/Suffolk poll from early September found around 7.5% of respondents said they were undecided or planned to vote third-party in the presidential election.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent candidate Cornel West are both running on a pro-Palestinian message and are pulling around 1 and 2 percent of voters respectively, according to the poll.

Of those who were withholding their vote from Harris, 21% said they disagreed with her views and 11% cited the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Twenty-nine percent said they needed more information, signaling room for growth for the vice president.

Alzayat said his group only has reliable data from before Harris became the Democratic candidate. At that time in mid-summer, around 30% of those polled said they would consider not voting or voting third party over the Biden administration's handling of the crisis.

Now, “a lot of people are considering voting for Harris when it comes down to it because they fully understand the options and the logic of their choices,” he said, according to the group’s unofficial internal polling. “But what they're not comfortable with is expressing it publicly because of what's happening.”

Richard Czuba, founder of the Michigan-based polling firm Glengariff Group, said a recent survey of 600 voters he conducted in the state from Oct. 1-4 indicated the number of people who won't vote for Harris over Gaza is small. Only around 3% of respondents said they planned to support Stein, West or another third-party or independent candidate. Almost 5% said they would support Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will remain on the Michigan ballot despite dropping out of the 2024 race and throwing his support behind Trump.

A recent poll of 600 North Carolina voters from the Wall Street Journal found 10% of voters said they planned to support Kennedy, 2% planned to support West, 1% said they'd support Stein and another 9% said they were undecided.

It’s hard to measure the impact of Muslim and Arab American voters on the potential outcome, Czuba said. But another key part of the Democratic coalition – young voters – has clearly embraced Harris in the state.

As for whether the war in Gaza could cost Harris the election in Michigan, Czuba said, “we’re not seeing it in the numbers."

Levin, the former Michigan Democratic congressman, said he's worried the war in Gaza could still be a deciding factor in who wins the White House and that he's going to be advocating for Palestinian, Lebanese, Arab and Muslim voter turnout for Harris "right through 8 p.m. on Nov. 5th."

"And then on Nov. 6th, everybody can turn back around and keep pressuring for peace and for change."

As the election approaches, Bir of Durham said she's not changing her position.

She said Harris only has herself to blame for failing to win uncommitted voters' support, and that she would have a better chance of winning if she embraced an arms embargo to Israel, as earlier polls from pro-Palestinian group the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding Policy Project, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and from the Arab American Institute might suggest.

Other surveys indicate Americans are more split, such as the Associated Press-NORC's poll showing an equal share of Americans say the U.S. is spending "too much" and "the right amount" to aid Israel, and a Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll that says 60% of Americans want the U.S. to continue military support until Israeli hostages are freed.

Bir compared today's pro-Palestinian activism – and the pushback they're facing from mainstream Democrats – with the activists who opposed the Vietnam War in the 1960s and '70s. There's "a history of resistance that's seen as a negative when it's actually an important thing," she said.

Still, Bir knows it's a hard choice for many. Her own husband plans to vote for Harris, and her group, Mothers for Ceasefire, doesn't plan to weigh in on the election. "Everyone's going to do their own thing, and we're supportive," she said.

She wishes there was a viable third option, and she's tired of multiple election cycles with what she sees as two bad candidates. In the meantime, she said she'll keep turning up on a street corner in Durham, pushing for change.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Can uncommitted voters still swing the 2024 presidential election?