'Damning' New Poll Shows Price Kamala Harris Paid for Backing Israeli Genocide in Gaza
'Damning' New Poll Shows Price Kamala Harris Paid for Backing Israeli Genocide in Gaza | Common Dreams
Another article that uses the same poll that says 19 million people who voted for Biden didn't vote despite not having any sources for that number. The Harris and Biden vote difference was under 6 million. 19 million is multiplying that times around 3.
Edit: I also find it interesting that so many of the polls we have had about the reasons people didn't vote for Harris have different reasons. Some say Inflation, this one says Gaza. Just interesting how different polls can be conducted. This one was also backed by the Institute for Middle East Understanding so, while I don't think they necessarily rigged it, I am not surprised that a poll backed by a Middle East organization showed support for Gaza was a deciding reason for a lot of voters. Regardless, Gaza had some impact that can't be disregarded.
Second edit: to be clear, I'm not saying the poll says 19 million, I'm saying the article does with no evidence. I'm keeping the original wording and correcting it in this edit for clarities sake.
The poll doesn't say 19 million anywhere
It also addresses issues raised in your edit (e.g. "Across the six battleground states that flipped from Biden to Trump, 20% of these voters said “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” was their top issue in deciding not to vote for Harris, the second-most cited reason behind only the economy (33%)." - to your point about how they didn't discuss the economy).
That's what I'm saying about the 19 million figure. But the articles second paragraph is this
A YouGov poll backed by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project and released on Wednesday showed that among the 19 million people who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 but did not vote in 2024, nearly a third named Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza as a top reason for staying home.
My point is that that 19 million figure makes no sense/has no evidence to support it and isn't mentioned anywhere in the poll.
Yes an edit: Also that's a good point about the battleground state stats, thanks for pointing it out. I know Gaza had an impact, its just interesting seeing how much of an impact it actually had, which other polls show as much lower. Again, different polls, different methodologies, and different ways of getting the poll participants with Yougov doing purely online polls.
The biggest reason is that voter turnout wasn't repressed, the 2020 turnout was artificially inflated by emergency vote by mail rules due to the pandemic.
2012 - Obama 65,915,795 Romney 60,933,504
Total - 126,849,299
2016 - Trump 62,984,828 Clinton 65,853,514
Total - 128,838,342
2020 - Biden 81,283,501 Trump 74,223,975
Total - 155,507,476
2024 - Trump 77,303,573 Harris 75,019,257
Total - 152,322,830
The 19M could add up if there were 13M voters who either voted for the first time or voted for Trump in the last election. Say if Harris's total was 56M Biden voters, 8M first time voters, and 5M Trump 2020 voters.
That still seems like a stretch, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. Someone would need to do some work to show that though, not just say it and be expected to be trusted.
That's a massive stretch with 0 evidence to support it so is just speculation. Not literally impossible, but multiple new orgs saying 19 million without that evidence is fucking weird.
To piggyback on this, left-leaning echo chambers tend to underestimate the impact of turning on Israel amongst older voters, who tend to be more religious.
From the other article covering the poll, Biden-Harris respondents were also asked how a change in policy would have affected their enthusiasm. 5% said it would make them less enthusiastic, 35% said more.
I definitely agree with that. We can argue about whether Harris would have benefited from saying she'd stop arms being sent to Israel, but to say it wouldn't have hurt her as well is ignoring how much of the public supports Israel. There's also a lot of people on the left who would have simultaneously said they're glad she supports stopping arms sales to Israel and yet still find some other reason not to vote for her. The decision on which way for the campaign to go on the Palestinian genocide isn't as easy or clear cut as many seem to think.
Kamala responded to her own voters' protestations about Palestine by dismissing them with "I'm speaking now..."
Well, in the end, it was the voters that spoke. And they sent her packing.
And the centrists who endlessly said, "Donald Trump will be even worse for Palestine!," we seem to now have a cease fire, even before Trump takes office. It looks like this particular genocide will be one that was entirely on Biden's watch.
75,000,000 people voted for Kamala.
77,000,000 people voted for a guy who wants Israel to "finish the job" in Gaza.
You only speak for yourself.
It seems now that the genocide will be entirely on Biden's head. There's a cease fire deal that's been signed. And Trump winning probably did provide a lot of the impetus to get that deal signed.
I despise Trump for other reasons, but when he said, "finish the job," he clearly meant, "wrap this up." You can interpret it as a call for total genocide, but that's your reading of it, not an objective good-faith reading.
The truth is, in practice, Trump would have not been any worse than Biden on Gaza, even if the war had continued. Biden is already giving full US support to Israel. There's nothing that a president can give Israel that Biden isn't already giving Israel. I suppose a president could order US troops to directly participate in the fighting, but even Trump's not that stupid.
The hard truth is that both Trump and Biden are the same on Israel. There is no meaningful difference between their policies. And Harris made clear she was going to have the same stance on Israel that Trump now will - full unconditional support.
But anyway, it's most likely now that the deaths in Gaza will look something like this:
Under Biden's watch: 100,000-200,000 killed in a coordinated campaign of extermination
Under Trump's watch: a few hundred killed in random occasional spurts of violence while under a state of cease-fire.
Historically, this genocide will be entirely on Biden's head. It's his genocide. Trump won't have that stain on his record.
And how many voted to stay in the couch and support neither? Those anti-genocide votes were right there for the taking but the DNC wanted those sweet sweet AIPAC donations so badly they couldnt bring themselves to choose to win. They tried to cut it close and have their cake and eat it too. They failed. The noodle-backboned centrists failed us yet again.
A ceasefire, how novel.
The US negotiated one back in 2023, Israel immediately violated that one and claimed Hamas had done the same.
Lets just see how the parties will honor this ceasefire.
Oh for crying out loud. They surveyed LESS THAN 500 PEOPLE.
This "damning" new poll is bullshit. They're extrapolating out from 474 people polled to try and pretend like they can accurately tell me what 19 MILLION people think?
This is just sad.
Edit: lol at the downvote. But seriously, that's not a representative sample size. By several orders of magnitude. This is stupid.
You don't understand how sample sizes or margins of error are calculated. That's why you're being downvoted.
I hadn't even noticed how small that sample size was. 474 is a tiny ass study. This kind of poll should have been conducted with far more participants if it wanted to be taken more seriously. At least 1000. It's an online pollster, so it's not like it'd be impossible to get that many.
Maybe the article should talk about the price America will pay for the lame ass campaign.
At least you didn't have to vote for a candidate who was against genocide.
