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CV NEWS FEED // Results show that Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan played a significant role in President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the crucial battleground state this week.
As CatholicVote previously noted, “Michigan has the highest percentage of Arab-American residents out of all the states (2.1%),” with the community’s estimated population in the state being between 220,000 and 400,000.
For decades before the 2024 election, Arab and Muslim Americans voted heavily for the Democratic Party.
However, two Detroit suburbs – in majority-Arab Dearborn and majority-Muslim Hamtramck – dramatically swung toward Trump and away from Kamala Harris, with the president-elect winning the former and only narrowly losing the latter.
Both cities had overwhelmingly voted against Trump and for the Biden-Harris ticket just four years earlier.
On Wednesday, The New York Times reported: “Unofficial results released by the city of Dearborn show that Mr. Trump won 42 percent of the vote in Dearborn, compared with 36 percent for Ms. Harris and 18 percent for the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein.”
In 2020, the Biden-Harris Democratic ticket carried Dearborn with just under 70% of the vote, per the Times.
In returns of Dearborn’s Election Day vote reported Tuesday night, Trump received 45% of the city’s vote. In these returns, Stein shockingly came in second with one-third of Dearborn’s vote, and Harris finished in a distant third with an abysmal 15%.
Split Ticket data director Armin Thomas took to X (formerly Twitter) to call the results a “stunning collapse” for the failed Democratic nominee’s bid.
Stein ran as a left-wing pro-peace candidate and prominently campaigned on her support for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. Stein’s running mate Professor Butch Ware is a convert to Islam.
During a Trump campaign visit to Dearborn, a voter asked the GOP candidate what he thought about Gaza, where many have died in Israeli bombardments. “It’s got to stop,” Trump responded, vowing “What we want is peace.”
Meanwhile in Hamtramck, final results showed that Harris narrowly won the city with a plurality of 46% of the vote. Trump finished in a strong second with 43% – just three points behind. Stein received 9% of the vote in the city.
Oakland University political science professor Dave Dulio noted on X that the Biden-Harris ticket “won Hamtramck 86% to 14% in 2020” – meaning there was a swing of nearly 30 points to Trump in the city from 2020 to 2024.
The Detroit Free Press’ Niraj Warikoo noted that Hamtramck’s non-Arab Muslim residents were pivotal in pushing Harris over the top in the suburb.
“Bangladeshi-American voters who support Hamtramck Councilman Mohammad Hassan – who endorsed Kamala Harris and campaigned for her – came up big for Harris,” Warikoo wrote on X.
Socially conservative Democratic Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib notably endorsed Trump back in September.
At the time, the mayor stated: “President Trump and I may not agree on everything but I know he is a man of principles … I believe he is the right choice for this critical time.”
Ghalib is an Arab Muslim who was born in Yemen and migrated to the United States as a teenager.
>> SEPTEMBER: MUSLIM DEMOCRATIC MICHIGAN MAYOR ENDORSES TRUMP <<
Ameen Almudhari, a 33-year-old Yemeni-American Dearborn resident, told the Times that he voted for Trump in 2024 after backing Biden-Harris in 2020 due to the foreign policy views of the respective candidates.
The Times reported that Almudhari “faulted” President Joe Biden “for spending American money to support the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.”
The voter’s 10-year-old son had enthusiastically exclaimed to the Times, “Trump will end the war!”
Newsweek reported on Wednesday that Stein told the publication
Harris only has herself to blame for losing the Muslim vote in Michigan—and that the Democratic Party has lost its credibility.
Stein rejects the suggestion that she helped President-elect Donald Trump win in Michigan and elsewhere.
“Harris lost those votes to start with. In many ways, we were the competitor to Trump,” she said.
