Did Gaza Cost Harris the Election?
The evidence is thin.
Axios (“Scoop: Dems working on secret report found Gaza cost Harris votes“):
Top Democratic officials who worked on the party’s still-secret autopsy of the 2024 election concluded that Kamala Harris lost significant support because of the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Gaza, Axios has learned.
The Democratic National Committee’s research on what went wrong in 2024 has been under lock and key since party leaders decided last year to hide it from the public — a reflection of how explosively it could resonate within the party and beyond. Progressive and moderate Democrats are particularly divided over Israel, with the left more critical of that nation’s actions against Palestinians in Gaza and many questioning the U.S.’s unwavering support for Israel.
[…]
Activists from the IMEU Policy Project told the DNC that the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel was a factor in the party’s losses because it drained support from some young people and progressives. Hamid Bendaas, a spokesperson for the IMEU Policy Project, said that during the meeting “the DNC shared with us that their own data also found that policy was, in their words, a ‘net-negative’ in the 2024 election.” Two other senior aides at the pro-Palestinian organization also said the DNC had drawn that conclusion.
So, what we have here isn’t a conclusion from the DNC of its wide-ranging analysis, but an imput from something called the IMEU Policy Project. Despite studying foreign policy for a living and having spent years working in the DC foreign policy think tank world, I had never heard of it before this morning (even though it has been around since 2005). “IMEU” stands for Institute for Middle East Understanding. Its mission statement:
The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) works to increase and enhance the public’s understanding about Palestine, Palestinians, and Palestinian Americans through media. We do this by offering mainstream US media organizations and journalists access to facts, resources, analysis, and experts in order to help them cover key issues with accuracy and depth, and by creating and disseminating original articles, fact sheets, videos, photo essays, and other digital content.
There’s considerably more at the website, but you get the idea: this is hardly a neutral party.
Regardless, the topline finding is almost certainly true. The Gaza war was incredibly controversial. It’s almost certainly the case that the Biden-Harris administration’s siding with Israel cost Harris some votes. Hell, taking a stand on any controversial issue will cost any candidate some votes.
But, of course, the Democratic Party has traditionally done quite well with Jewish voters. If the exit polls are to be believed, 78% of self-identified Jews went for Harris, compared to only 22% for Trump. Tablet tells me that this was “a historically high margin.” While Jewish opinion is, of course, not monolithic on Israel or any other issue, being significantly more pro-Palestinian in the conflict may well have cost Harris enough Jewish votes to offset whatever gains with the elusive “some young people.”
IMEU claims the issue was a “net negative.” But, according to the exit polls, the country was almost perfectly split:
Of the “too strong” camp—presumably the IMEU position—67% went for Harris, compared to 30% for Trump. Of the “just right” camp, 60% went for Harris, compared to 39% for Trump. Trump dominated the “not strong enough” camp 82% to 18%.
In any relatively close election, one can point to any factor and make a case that it was decisive. It’s really hard to do here. Assuming the exit polls are relatively accurate (and, let’s stipulate, the increase in early and mail-in voting means they may not be representative), there’s just no evidence that being too strong on Israel was a net negative. Essentially, we have to conjure a large number of angry “too strong” progressives who either voted for Trump (which seems wildly implausible) or stayed home (which is quite possible, but damn hard to prove).
Beyond that, it bears repeating the point Steven Taylor spent weeks hammering: the 2024 U.S. election was part of a global anti-incumbent wave. Years of COVID restrictions, supply chain shocks, inflation, cultural conflicts, and negative-biased information flows across the West left a frustrated citizenry in the mood for someone else. Indeed, we were asking in August 2024 whether Harris would be able to overcome the incumbency curse.
Incumbency plus inflation. People really hate inflation.
Steve
We do know Trump won a plurality of the vote in Dearborn, with Jill Stein taking 18%.
And yes, there were Arab Americans who voted for Trump thinking he was going to bring peace to the region. It’s not wildly implausible. Just wildly stupid, which our country’s citizens tend to be.
All that said, I have my doubts this effect extended beyond Michigan, and it’s not even clear it was decisive on its own in flipping the state to Trump.
I was there.
Lies about the economy, which continue today, turned the election.
Democrats are stupid.
@Daryl:
As are the MAGAt’s who revel in this type of homoerotic fantasy…
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116119516514284571
Talk about stealing valor…skates pretty well considering his bone spurs.
IMO, it may have cost her Michigan. I don’t think that state alone would have turned the election, seeing as she also lost Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada (not to mention Arizona and Georgia).
Also, Harris was between the devil and the deep blue sea in regards to Gaza. Support Israel, and she’d be seen as anti-Palestinian. Support the Palestinians, and she’d be seen as antisemitic. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and pick one already. It’s gotta be one or the other.
Kathy is spot-on:
And for that reason, Gaza costing Harris the election is an IMEU fantasy. There are SO many other factors, including inflation, immigration and Uncle Joe staying too long at the dance, for any one issue or voting group to have been THE decisive factor in an election that Trump won by less than 2%.
@Kathy:
We agree – Gaza mattered, perhaps most in Michigan.
I’ve had many discussions with friends regarding the 2024 result. I believe that Harris lost owing to five factors: (1) Immigration, (2) Inflation (a-for-da-bi-la-tee), (3) Culture War pronoun panic, (4) she was perceived as the incumbent, and (5) Joe Biden’s debate freeze in June – after that I now believe it was over.
Generally I think that Immigration and Culture Wars fueled MAGA support, and Incumbency turned out to be too much for Harris to overcome.
@Kathy: Splitting the difference is rarely a winning strategy in an election. Ask John Kerry (voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, opposed going in except as a last resort) or Mitt Romney (supported a state-level equivalent to the ACA, opposed the national version). What usually happens is that you end up pissing off both sides, rather than building a broad base of support from the center. It wasn’t always this way (it’s kind of what JFK did in 1960 to attract black voters while avoiding pissing off the Dixiecrats too much), but it very much is that way nowadays.
Anecdotally, there are Jews who claim to have turned against the Democratic Party due to a perception that it has become anti-Israel since Oct. 7, but I don’t know of any research determining how widespread this was. What’s confusing is that I’ve seen wildly different estimates of the Jewish vote for Harris in 2024, ranging from 66% (relatively low) to 78% (historically high).
Outside of a few small demographic groups, Americans don’t vote on foreign policy. When it comes to questions of foreign policy, Americans are the most ignorant people on Earth. In the case of the Gaza war that ignorance was bipartisan, as it was during Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Right now, today, our new friends, the ‘reformed’ jihadis of the Syrian government have attacked our old friends, the Kurds, and freed tens of thousands of imprisoned Al Qaeda fighters. Tens of thousands of terrorists, released. Is anyone protesting this horror show? Does anyone even know it’s happening? I wonder if we’ll notice when bombs start going off in European cafés, and Americans are targeted throughout the Middle East? How about when the Israelis start bombing the reconstituted Al Qaeda?
Now it seems we are preparing to obliterate the same nuclear facilities we already obliterated in Iran. Is anyone going to notice that the success of the first round was wildly exaggerated? Is anyone – particularly in our flaccid Congress – going to ask WTF the plan is for Iran? Is Trump going to demand Iran give him personal control of their oil production with all proceeds going to a Trump account in Qatar?
Here’s my grand unified theory of the election.
The top line items were:
1. Anti-incumbency plus structural issues (the long GOP slide into maddens and Covid exacerbating the feeling that everyone’s getting screwed.
2. Inflation (which drives me crazy because people don’t understand it and that makes them vulnerable to fantasy bullshit.)
I think those two thing get us like 97% of the way there, then the last little bit is:
3. Turnout/suppression.
I don’t mean suppression in the legal or fairness sense. The turnout factor is that Trump managed to get a whole bunch of people that don’t pay attention and don’t really vote to the polls. The suppression bit is that Trump was able to take a couple of culture war things and hold a mirror up to Harris. Harris looked in the mirror and failed. She didn’t fight for pro-palestine vote. She made it clear that Israel could keep doing whatever it wanted and she would support it. Trump took trans issues and beat her over the head with it. Not because people were necessarily bigoted, but because she didn’t fight at all.
I would also add in jumping into bed with Cheney and muzzling Walz. I suspect that there was a large group of voters that were looking for someone to fight. Harris made it clear that she wasn’t going to fight anyway. She was going to Merrick Garland her way through the crisis.
I don’t have any hard data, but I ran into a whole lot of people were were not energized after the first week or so. I know I felt it by the end. Given the margins, I don’t think it would have taken a whole lot to tip things the other way. But she had to fight.
To be clear, I don’t think that any one bit of #3 is fatal, but taken all together, Trump turned out people and Harris suppressed her own side.
From what I can tell, neither the Democrats in the US, nor Labour in the UK have realized that you have to turn out your base first. If your base isn’t going to vote for you, the otherside definitely isn’t going to be persuaded (where possible) to vote for you. This Thursday’s election here is going to be interesting.