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Kamala Harris’s Support for Israel Did Not Harm Failed Presidential Campaign, Data Firm Finds
US Vice President Kamala Harris. Photo: Erin Schaff/Pool via REUTERS
US Vice President Kamala Harris’s expressed support for Israel had minimal impact on her failed 2024 presidential campaign, according to new data released by a Democratic-aligned analytics firm.
Voters largely rejected Harris and supported newly minted President-elect Donald Trump due to the Biden administration’s record on inflation and immigration, according to Blueprint, a self-described “public opinion research initiative.” Perception of Harris as “too pro-Israel” ranked among the lowest concerns that the electorate had with the Democratic presidential nominee.
Among “all voters,” regardless of their political views, the prompt “Kamala Harris is too pro-Israel” received a “relative importance score” of -22, making it one of the bottom three “reasons to not choose” Harris. The same prompt received a score of -24 and -30 by self-described “swing voters” and “swing voters” who ultimately “chose Trump,” respectively.
The scores were calculated by presenting respondents with random pairs of potential reasons to vote against Harris and asking them to select which reason they found more compelling. According to Blueprint, the “strength of each criticism was measured by how frequently it was chosen when presented as part of a pair. The relative importance is how much more it was selected than the average criticism.”
In other words, the criticism that Harris “is too pro-Israel” was selected 28 percent of the time, so it has a relative importance of -22. Only the criticisms that Harris is “too conservative” and “isn’t similar enough to [incumbent President] Joe Biden” were chosen fewer times.
The criticisms chosen most often were that “inflation was too high under the Biden-Harris administration,” “too many immigrants illegally crossed the border under the Biden-Harris administration,” and Harris “is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.”
Despite the insistence that the Israel-Hamas war would cost Harris votes from progressives and ethnic minorities, the poll suggests that Black and Latino voters were largely indifferent to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The prompt “Kamala Harris is too pro-Israel” received a “relative importance score” of -14 from Black voters and -20 from Latino voters, landing in last place among all 25 reasons to not choose Harris offered by the data analytics firm.
Notably, according to Blueprint, voters were somewhat more likely to vote against Harris for being “too pro-Palestine.” Harris’s perceived support for the Palestinians received a score of -13 from all voters. The prompt received a -14 from both self-described swing voters and swing voters who backed Trump.
Black and Latino voters were also more likely to reject Harris over a perception of the vice president being too “pro-Palestine.” The prompt received a score of -12 from Black voters and -13 from Latino voters.
The data seems to undermine the notion that Harris suffered electoral consequences over the Biden administration’s perceived support for Israel. Upon launching her presidential campaign in July, Harris was immediately flooded with demands by left-wing activists to adopt an adversarial posture toward the Jewish state. The Israel-Hamas war quickly emerged as a focal point within the Harris campaign, with the vice president repeatedly bemoaning the “unacceptable” number of casualties in Gaza. Harris also made several overtures to pro-Palestinian forces within the Democratic coalition, such as holding secret meetings with Arab American leaders.
Despite the emergence of a high-pressure campaign against Israel on social media and news outlets, polls suggest that overwhelming shares of Americans support Israel over Hamas and believe the Jewish state should continue its defensive military operations until it achieves its security goals.
The post Kamala Harris’s Support for Israel Did Not Harm Failed Presidential Campaign, Data Firm Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.