Eliott Mamane is a columnist for several newspapers.
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In the United States, religion is an essential socialization criterion.
It therefore has a decisive consequence on the vote of individuals, especially in a nation where faith is sacred.
In this regard, Michigan is one of the most unstable states in the country.
The electoral maps of the primaries, organized this February 27, testify to the causality between religious and political affiliations.
Indeed, this campaign takes place while the context in the Middle East is eruptive in the United States, since America directly finances a certain number of weapons benefiting the IDF.
If Joe Biden's diplomatic policy is not particularly innovative in this area compared to that of his predecessors, he inherits a Democratic Party caught between two demographic portions of the population which have always constituted its electorate.
On the one hand, American Jews, historically progressive and supportive of the Democrats.
On the other, a woke wing which is gaining importance within this same party and intends to conquer the vote of a “Muslim community” (according to the terminology which prevails across the Atlantic) which has been expanding demographically for two decades.
However, these electoral blocs that we thought were stabilized are tending to transform.
According to a poll released last week, more than half of New York Jews plan to vote for Trump next November.
However, as the American intellectual Norman Podhoretz indicated in
Why are Jews liberals?
,
"In every presidential election since 1928 - with the sole exception of Jimmy Carter in 1980 - the Democratic candidate has achieved an overwhelming score among Jewish voters, even when overwhelmingly defeated by the electorate as a whole.
No Democratic candidate in all these elections (again, Carter excepted) has attracted less than 60 percent of the Jewish vote, and the overall average since 1928 is 75 percent
.
The shift that is emerging this year is therefore not just an anecdote intended for the most zealous students of electoral sociology.
It reflects a major change in American political reality.
A pivotal state if ever there was one, any Democrat wishing to secure a victory in Michigan must obtain the support of Muslim voters.
Eliott Mamane
Generally speaking, American Jews have expressed loyalty to Democrats, less out of partisan allegiance than because of their progressivism.
For example, various opinion surveys show that they are much more in favor of the right to abortion or homosexual marriage than the general population, and have been for several decades.
Added to these societal positions is a diplomatic variable: they voted for the Republicans in 1980, seduced by Reagan's neo-conservatism.
The experience was nevertheless short-lived and the Jews returned to the Democratic fold in the following election, Reagan having been particularly harsh towards Israel - we learn in his memoirs that he accused the Prime Israeli minister at the time of having committed a “holocaust” in the conflict between the Jewish state and the PLO in Lebanon.
The Muslim electorate – or “Arab-Americans” generally – is rigorously conservative.
Extremely anti-abortion, he was won over to the Republicans until the right was accused of “anti-Arab” inclinations following September 11: in 2000, 78% of Muslim Americans voted for Bush.
In short, the equation presents perfect symmetry with the determinants of the “Jewish vote” in the United States: it is firstly motivated by societal convictions, to which a diplomatic variable is superimposed.
On the other hand, the elasticity of the vote here depends on the anti-Zionism of the candidate for a mandate.
This is precisely what is lacking in Joe Biden, who is criticized by the most progressive members of the Democratic Party for his support for Israel.
Why does Michigan crystallize these sociological dilemmas?
This state has the largest Muslim communities in the country: being distributed in prominent sectors of different counties, they are able to influence the results of national elections.
A pivotal state if ever there was one, any Democrat wishing to secure a victory in Michigan must obtain the support of Muslim voters.
However, the operation is delicate for Joe Biden since the campaign is polarized around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On the one hand, he must limit the damage within his Jewish electorate, excluded from the intersectional matrix of certain Democrats who demand a Palestine “from the river to the Sea”.
On the other hand, it is a question of generating a sufficiently strong momentum for the Muslims of Michigan to swing their entire state in their favor next November: without them, the electoral votes allocated to this state will go to the Republicans.
Clearly, if Biden wants to win in November, he will have to ensure that Michigan Muslims vote for him in an even more unified way than rural voters voted for Trump.
Eliott Mamane
What do the results of this week's primary tell us?
Disappointed by Biden's support for Israel since October 7, many representatives of Michigan Muslims called, ahead of the vote, on members of their community to vote uncommitted
,
but in the Democratic primary all the same .
This was notably the case of Abdullah Hammoud, mayor of Dearborn, a city where the largest mosque in North America is located (and where the LGBT flag has been banned).
Statewide, more than 100,000 people expressed their protest by voting in this way.
For comparison, there were barely 20,000 during the last Democratic primaries, in 2020!
But above all, the majority of these votes the day before yesterday were due to counties with the largest Muslim populations in the state, notably Wayne.
A blank ballot in a primary is particularly alarming and indicates to the Party leadership a disagreement between it and its base.
Can this state alone change the course of the campaign?
He has already done it, in a sense: in France, we have retained images of Joe Biden, welcoming the imminence of a ceasefire in Gaza “with Ramadan approaching”, which the American president struggled to eat the ice cream in his hand.
Rather, it should have been noted that these remarks were made on Monday, the day before the primaries in Michigan, and that they demonstrate the national and international influence that this single state exercises on American politics.
The other dominant sociological group in Michigan is essentially rural: it is an electorate where Trump excels.
Clearly, if Biden wants to win in November, he will have to ensure that Michigan Muslims vote for him in an even more unified way than rural voters voted for Trump.
In fact, the outgoing president will have to revise his diplomatic program.