Kamala Harris’s Support for Israel Did Not Harm Failed Presidential Campaign, Data Firm Finds

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.

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