NEW YORK: A new US poll shows that many voters are increasingly put off by President Joe Biden’s leadership, while former President Donald Trump has garnered relatively high support ahead of November’s presidential election.
In survey results released Saturday by The New York Times and Siena College, 47% of 980 registered voters said they “strongly disapprove” of Biden’s handling of his job, the highest figure for this rate in any Times/Siena poll during his presidency.
The national poll, conducted in February, also shows Biden’s 43% of support trailing behind Trump’s 48%, a potential warning sign for the Democratic president.
At 81, Biden has faced criticism for being the oldest sitting president in U.S. history. He has also received pushback for his handling of the current conflict in Gaza, where health officials say that more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault since October. Biden has remained a strong supporter of Israel.
Meanwhile, 77-year-old Trump has more successfully unified support within his party as he seeks to retake the White House, despite his recent legal losses and upcoming trials.
According to the Times/Siena poll, Trump has the support of 97% of people who say they voted for him in the 2020 election, while Biden is winning just 83% of his voters from four years ago. Ten percent of the 2020 Biden voters said they would now vote for Trump, the poll found.
Meanwhile, growing outrage over President Biden’s support for Israel in its relentless bombardment of Gaza is prompting Arab-American and Muslim voters to declare that they intend to stay away from the polls.
In Michigan, where early primaries was held, one-time Biden’s Muslim supporters sent his administration a strong message by voting “uncommitted”, even as the president’s aides scrambled to meet and mend broken ties with community leaders.
Here’s what American Arab and Muslim communities want, why the two voting blocs are important for Biden, and the parts of the US where they are most influential:
Arab and Muslim communities have been calling on the Biden administration to speak up and halt the killings in Gaza with no results. Some are Palestinians with families and friends in the besieged strip.
These communities have diverse demands, the main ones being that: The US support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and work to see Palestinian political prisoners, as well as Israeli captives, freed;
— Washington stops military funding to Israel.
— Push for sufficient aid to Palestinians and resumes paused humanitarian funding to UNRWA, the UN aid agency under investigation amid accusations its staff members took part in Hamas’s October 7 operations, and,
— The US government do more to fight rising anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian hate.
However, many say they’re not being heard and that Washington’s stance is particularly painful because of how they’ve supported Biden in the past.
Communities in Dearborn, Detroit, and other major cities with significant Arab-American populations have successfully lobbied their local council leaders to pass resolutions for a ceasefire in Gaza.
While the local laws do not weigh on US foreign policy, Mai El-Sadany, director of the DC-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP), told Al Jazeera that local resolutions are symbolic and are pointers to the concerns and priorities of American citizens.
