Nearly a third of US voters who cast their ballots for former President Joe Biden in 2020 decided against voting for Kamala Harris because Biden supported Israel’s war on Gaza, a new poll has shown.
The poll conducted by the Institute of Middle East Understanding and YouGov attempts to provide a possible answer to the question of why Harris received six million fewer votes than Biden received in 2020.
The survey, which was released last week, found that 29 percent of Americans who voted for Biden in 2020 and didn’t vote for Harris in 2024 cited “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” as their reason for withholding their vote.
“Vice President Harris lost votes because of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” IMEU said in a statement announcing the poll.
That reason surpassed the economy, immigration, healthcare, and abortion, all of which have historically been major voter issues in past presidential elections. Foreign policy is often a low factor in voter turnout.
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Harris became the Democratic nominee last July after Biden dropped out of the race following a dismal performance in the first debate against Donald Trump.
While many Democratic voters were hopeful that Harris would break from Biden’s unconditional and unrelenting support for Israel’s war on Gaza, Harris made no effort to create any distance between her and her predecessor on the issue.
At the Democratic National Convention in August 2024, when Harris was to be officially nominated as the Democratic nominee for president, the DNC was met with major pro-Palestinian protests outside the convention hall.
Inside the convention, DNC delegates aligned with the Uncommitted Movement called on the convention leaders to allow a Palestinian speaker to speak on the main stage. The request was unequivocally denied.
While Harris offered a softer tone and evoked empathy with the Palestinians killed and under constant Israeli bombardment, Harris and those around her continuously reiterated support for Israel’s war effort.
“Let me just make this clear: The vice president has been and will be a strong supporter of Israel as a secure democratic and Jewish state, and she will always ensure that Israel can defend itself, period. Because that’s who Kamala Harris is,” Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband, said during a Zoom call in July 2024.
The IMEU and YouGov poll surveyed 604 voters between 20 December 2024 and 7 January 2025.
Democrats failed to listen to voters
In the 2024 presidential election, Harris received 75 million votes compared to Trump’s 77 million votes.
Given that the overall drop-off in voter turnout was smaller in several swing states in 2024, it’s difficult to definitively conclude that one issue alone led previous Biden voters to not vote for Harris.
However, the IMEU and YouGov poll found that 2020 Biden voters were three times more likely than not to vote for Harris if she “pledged to break from President Biden’s policy toward Gaza by promising to withhold additional weapons to Israel”.
Among that same group of voters, 53 percent said that Biden’s support for Israel was “too much”.
During the 2024 election cycle, leading figures within the Democratic Party framed Harris as the better alternative for voters outraged by the US support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
The war, which began after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023, has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians while also destroying much of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and displacing most of the enclave’s population of two million Palestinians.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive figure in the Democratic Party, claimed in August 2024 that Harris was “working tirelessly” for a ceasefire in Gaza.
However, a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was finally achieved after Trump was elected as president, and after his incoming envoy travelled to the region to push Israel to accept a deal.
“The Democratic Party needs to come to terms with the real reasons it lost the presidency in November, including that after over a year of unprecedented protests and calls for Biden to stop sending weapons to Israel, party leadership failed to listen to its own voters who overwhelmingly want their government to end its complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” IMEU said.
