A majority of Democratic voters say the Gaza crisis is either very or somewhat important in determining how they vote.

Commissioned by the Arab American Institute (AAI), the online poll of 2,505 American voters conducted between July 31 and August 1 found that 44% of U.S. voters would back Harris, 40% would support Republican nominee Donald Trump, and 11% would vote third party “if the election for president of the United States were held today.”

But if Harris were to endorse a suspension of U.S. arms shipments and diplomatic support for Israel “until there was a cease-fire and withdrawal of forces from Gaza,” her national support would grow from 44% to 49%.

A majority of Democratic voters say the Gaza crisis is either very or somewhat important in determining how they vote in November, according to the AAI poll.

The new survey, which has a margin of error of 2 percentage points, is consistent with an earlier poll commissioned by the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding Policy Project, which found that Harris would bolster her chances in key battleground states if she backed an arms embargo.

  • OldWoodFrame
    23·
    10 days ago

    I’m highly suspicious of the results, as you should always be when a group with a stated political goal releases a poll that shows their favored political goal is what a politician should do.

    You have to think there was bias in the presentation, eg the question was framed particularly softly like “if Kamala announced she would abide by current US law including the Leahy Law suspending arms shipments until there is a ceasefire which would save the lives of civilians on both sides” or whatever…that is all 100% true and consistent with what they’re saying, but in real life if she did that she’d get millions of dollars of negative ads framing the decision differently.

    Or maybe they just ran the poll 5 times and didn’t release the others because this one was the best result for them. That doesn’t make it an illegitimate poll, but it makes it more likely that the numbers are the high end of the potential benefit from such a stance.

    One other way this poll could be true but misleading is that maybe this declaration brings her from 44% to 49%, but it puts Trump from 40% to 51%. Or whatever. It’s possible that with no clarity, she goes from 44% to 52% because you can’t literally vote undecided, and the 49% number is actually her doing worse than she would have.