LONDON (Dispatches) – Jill Stein, the U.S. Green Party’s presidential candidate known for her vocal support of Palestinian rights, has emerged as the top choice among Arab American voters in the lead-up to the U.S. elections on Nov. 5, according to a recently conducted poll.
Stein, running as a third-party candidate, has garnered the support of over 45 percent of Arab Americans surveyed by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the largest Arab-American grassroots civil rights organization.
This places Stein, a physician and environmentalist, ahead of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, who received 27.5 percent of the vote in the same poll.
The survey was conducted between July 27 and 28 through a partnership between the ADC, Molitico for data insights, and the Community Pulse, which specializes in polling solutions.
According to Abed Ayoub, ADC’s national executive director, the Arab-American voter demographic has increasingly gravitated toward Stein owing to her advocacy for Palestinian human rights and her opposition to the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza since October.
In a post on the social platform X, he said: “Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein’s strong polling at 45.3 percent, akin to the previous poll, demonstrates consistent community support, largely because of her vocal stance on Palestinian human rights.”
Stein has been a favorite among Arab voters since ADC’s last opinion poll in May, where she led with 25 percent support. In comparison, President Joe Biden, who withdrew from the presidential race in July, and Republican candidate Donald Trump, polled at 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively.
In 2022, 2.2 million people in the U.S. reported having Arab ancestry in that year’s Arab Community Survey. The majority of Arab Americans are native-born, and 85 percent of Arabs in the U.S. are citizens.
While the community traces its roots to every Arab country, the majority of Arab Americans have ancestral ties to Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Iraq. The top four states by Arab American population size are California, Florida, Minnesota and Michigan.