Arab American voters have swung toward the Democrats this midterm election cycle, a significant shift for a group that evenly split its votes between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in 2024.
Among Arab American registered voters, 58 percent support Democrats for Congress this year, while 34 percent support Republicans, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted in August and September. The poll finds that 41 percent of Arab American registered voters report that they voted for Harris in 2024, while 39 percent backed Trump, in line with previous estimates.
The swing comes amid the voter group’s low approval rating of Trump’s handling of the economy and wars in the Middle East, and the perception that the president and his party are “unfriendly” toward Arab Americans.
The 3.5 million Americans with Arab ancestry make up 1 percent of the U.S. population, and a quarter of them live in the Midwest. Arabs make up 2 percent of the adult population in Michigan, where the race between Republican former congressman Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, could decide control of the U.S. Senate.
A closer look at how the survey was conducted
Polling Arab Americans is statistically challenging. Here’s what we did.
Michigan resident Brandy Benevides, 27, is among the 26 percent of Arab Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 and now support Democrats for Congress.
Benevides, who identifies as White with Lebanese heritage on her mother’s side, voted for the first time in 2024, inspired by Trump’s promise to improve the economy. But she regrets her vote.
“A couple of years ago, I was able to afford things. But now I’m going paycheck to paycheck,” said Benevides, a store manager and single mom of three. “I’m going to food pantries and I’m grateful, but they give me two boxes and sometimes it’s still not enough.”
As in 2024, the economy is the main factor deciding her vote this November. Seven in 10 Arab American voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. Meanwhile, nearly 4 in 10 Arab Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 disapprove of the president’s economic record amid rising prices of gas and groceries, fueled by his tariffs and war in Iran.
The cost of living is not the only issue hurting Trump’s standing with Arab Americans ahead of the midterms. In 2024, Trump courted the community and sought to capitalize on anger at the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war. The president met with community leaders and promised Arab American voters that they were “going to have peace in the Middle East” if they elected him.
But the war did not end and he started another in the region. Now 80 percent of Arab American voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of Israel and Gaza, while 75 percent disapprove of his handling of Iran. Nearly 8 in 10 want the U.S. to reduce military support for Israel, including 6 in 10 who want to end it entirely. This is significantly higher than the 58 percent of Americans overall who want to reduce or end military support for Israel, according to an October Post-ABC-Ipsos poll.
While two-thirds of Arab Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 still approve of his overall performance, much fewer approve of his handling of issues in the Middle East. Fifty-four percent of Arabs who voted for Trump disapprove of his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza, and 48 percent disapprove of the war in Iran.
Moe Eldessouky, 34, of California said he opposes Trump’s continued support for Israel, but he is willing to give him some grace and prefers Republican candidates in November for their stances on crimes and homelessness.
“It’s not an easy thing to do, end a war as president, but I would like to see less favoritism to one country, which is Israel,” Eldessouky said.
About 7 in 10 Arab Americans believe Israel has committed war crimes or genocide against Palestinians in Gaza compared with about half who think Hamas has committed war crimes against Israelis. Fewer than 2 in 10 trust Hamas to do what is best for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. There is little trust in any of the region’s major players, with fewer than 3 in 10 Arab Americans trusting the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations, the United States, Egypt or Saudi Arabia to do what is best for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Millet Michael Jr., 29, whose Christian grandfather emigrated from Lebanon, admires Trump’s approach to Israel, Gaza and Iran.
“They’ve been fighting since before Christ and they’ll never stop, and everybody’s been turning a blind eye to it,” said Michael.
Michael, who lives in Pennsylvania, is among the 73 percent of Arab American Trump 2024 voters who say they will continue to support Republicans this election cycle. He says he prefers their approach to illegal immigration.
The majority of Arab Americans, however, disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration and, generally, lean toward the Democratic Party. Arab Americans, overall, are more likely than the general electorate to prefer a bigger government that provides greater services, at 71 percent.
Roughly half of Arab Americans perceive the Republican Party as “unfriendly” toward them, and about 6 in 10 say the same of Trump.
About half of Arab Americans are Muslim, according to the poll, and multiple Republicans have adopted anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) accused “communists and Islamists” of flooding the Democratic Party. The pinned post on Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Alabama) X account is side-by-side images of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim, and the 9/11 attacks, captioned “the enemy is inside the gates.” Trump called El-Sayed a “radical jihadist” at a recent rally in Tennessee.
Arab Americans, however, do not perceive the Democratic Party as overly friendly either, with 45 percent holding a neutral opinion of the party’s approach toward them.
Joshua Kassab, 30, said he has always voted for Democrats, although he stopped identifying as a Democrat in 2024 because he was dissatisfied with the Biden administration’s support for Israeli strikes on Gaza. Kassab, who is Jewish and the grandson of an Iraqi immigrant, said he is outraged “as a Jew and as an American that those atrocities are being committed in my name.”
But medical costs and affordability are the most pressing issues he personally faces ahead of the midterm elections.
“I’m a Type 1 diabetic,” Kassab said. “There’s several hundred dollars a month that I need to pay in pharmaceutical bills to not die.”
On Nov. 3, he will vote, once again, for the Democratic candidates in Georgia.
The Washington Post-Schar School poll was conducted Aug. 20-Sept. 7, 2026, among a national sample of 358 U.S. adults with ancestry from predominantly Arab countries who also identified as Arab. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 6.7 percentage points; the error margin is seven points among the subsample of 325 Arab registered voters and 13 points among the sample of 99 Arab Trump voters.
Alauna Safarpour, an assistant professor of political science at Gettysburg College, contributed to this report.
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