Muslims were reliable voters for the Democrats. But the US Gaza policy has changed that.

As expected, the Democratic presidential ticket received a boost from the country's 2.5 million registered Muslim voters after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. However, more than a third of voters still plan to vote for a third-party candidate after the Democratic National Convention (DNC) left simmering anger over US support for Israel's war on Gaza largely unaddressed.

As many as 69 percent of registered Muslims say they vote predominantly for the Democratic Party, but third-party presidential candidates who oppose arms sales to Israel have cut that majority by about half, according to two nationwide polls released Thursday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Vice President Kamala Harris and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are virtually tied. According to a poll of 1,159 voters conducted shortly after the DNC, about 29 percent of Muslims plan to vote for each candidate. Another 4 percent plan to vote for Cornel West, the independent anti-war candidate who is still fighting to get on the ballot in several states.

Just over 11 percent want to vote for Republican Donald Trump, 16 percent are still undecided. Only 8 percent said they will not vote in November.

“This shows that Muslim voters, who traditionally voted for Biden at over 60 percent in the last election, have now split that 60 percent evenly between two candidates who are addressing their concerns with two very different messages,” said Robert McCaw, CAIR's director of government affairs, during a press conference Thursday.

The contrast between Stein and Harris is stark. Stein, a Jewish anti-Zionist, calls on voters to “abandon genocide-supporting candidates” and was arrested earlier this year during a police crackdown on a Palestine solidarity rally at Washington University in St. Louis. Harris works directly under Biden, the chief architect of U.S. policy toward Gaza, where an Israeli assault and siege have killed more than 40,600 people despite months of U.S.-led negotiations for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Although Harris tried to speak about Gaza with more compassion than Biden, the DNC and the angry protests outside Israel's gates came and went without any change in White House policy on arming Israel.

In her nomination speech at the DNC in Chicago last week, Harris briefly addressed the great suffering in Gaza and called for Palestinian “self-determination.” Meanwhile, thousands of people marched past the DNC, demanding an end to US support for Israel and accusing the Biden administration of complicity in the genocide.

As Harris spoke, unaffiliated delegates and Palestinian Democrats staged a sit-in outside the DNC after authorities denied a Palestinian speaker access to the main stage despite granting a prime-time slot to the families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Opinion polls suggest that as many as 75 percent of Democrats now oppose Israel's war on Gaza and sympathize with the Palestinians in far greater numbers than in the past. The refusal to allow a Palestinian into the DNC was widely viewed as an unnecessary mistake.

Since Biden dropped out of the race last month, however, the Muslim electorate has shifted significantly toward Harris. A CAIR poll of 2,850 Muslim voters conducted in late May and July, when Biden was still in the race, found that nearly 60 percent planned to vote for a third-party candidate, with 36 percent supporting Stein and 25 percent supporting West. At the time, 94 percent disapproved of Biden's overall job performance and 95 percent disapproved of the job performance of Congress.

McCaw said the percentage of Muslims planning to vote in November increased by 10 percentage points after Biden dropped out of the race.

“[Biden] “A withdrawal would increase the Democratic Party’s chances of success, at least within the Muslim community,” McCaw said.

While the poll shows a marked improvement for Democrats since July, McCaw said Muslim voters remain “deeply dissatisfied” with the state of the country — and particularly with U.S. foreign policy toward Israel and Palestine, which is the most important issue for Muslim voters this election cycle. The Muslim community is very diverse, and the poll shows that they are seriously concerned about the human rights of Muslims around the world, including ethnic minorities facing violence and oppression in India, China and Burma.

In fact, 64 percent of Muslims surveyed by CAIR in May and July said they “strongly disagree” with the claim that the U.S. government promotes “human rights and justice around the world.” Only 1 percent “strongly agree.” International human rights are the top issue motivating Muslim voters, followed by religious freedom and access to health care.

The unprecedented support for third-party candidates remains a major problem for Democrats trying to win over Muslim voters in key swing states, particularly Michigan, where the state's large Arab and Muslim populations turned out in large numbers to oppose Biden in the Democratic primary. With nearly 250,000 Muslim residents, even a low turnout could swing the state toward Trump.

McCaw said life in the U.S. has changed for many Muslims since Israel's war on Gaza began. In its annual civil rights report, CAIR lists 8,000 cases of anti-Muslim hate and prejudice reported by individuals across the country in 2023, including reports of discrimination in employment, education and the immigration system. Since the Oct. 7 attacks sparked Israel's revenge campaign in Gaza, CAIR has received hundreds of reports from Muslim students who say they have faced intimidation or arrest on campus during protests in recent months, according to McCaw.

The anger, sadness and frustration of Muslim voters is visible in the polls, and third-party candidates are ready to capitalize on it. However, a majority of Muslim voters (40 percent) identify as “moderate” politically, while nearly 30 percent identify as “conservative” and 19 percent as “liberal,” according to the CAIR poll. The broad support for Stein, a left-wing candidate often viewed by Democrats as a spoilsport, is not set in stone.

Gaza is a top priority for Muslim voters in November, and they reacted sharply to Biden's decision to drop out of the race. Harris acknowledged the suffering in Gaza and saw her support among Muslims grow in the days afterward, but in an interview this week she signaled that she was not willing to withhold weapons from Israel. Whether she can win back Muslim voters without a change in policy remains to be seen.