Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein claims Vice President Kamala Harris “can’t win” the election in November due to lack of support from Muslim and Arab Americans in key swing states.
Stein, an outspoken critic of Israel’s actions in response to the Oct. 7 attack, said her campaign is experiencing a “breakout moment” after recent polling has “put the fear of God into Democrats.”
"The Democrats cannot win without the support of the Muslim American community. And that community has left the station and is not coming back unless the Democrats decide that it's more important to them to win the election than it is to conduct the genocide," she said in a lengthy interview with Newsweek published Monday.
“So they have to do a 180 on the genocide and they don't appear willing to do that,” she continued. “They could win those votes back, but it doesn't look like that's on the cards. So it looks like they are sacrificing several swing states."
Israel, the outlet noted, denies it is conducting genocide.
The 74-year-old candidate has made Israel’s wars against Hamas and Hezbollah a defining issue in her campaign.
“[There's a] rumble taking place as our campaign is coming out of the woodwork," she said. Green Party leader Jill Stein says Kamala Harris has isolated groups of Muslim and Arab Americans in key battleground states, making it impossible to win the White House. https://t.co/piPL3qdRT1 pic.twitter.com/gvWtMMdNHA
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) September 30, 2024
Newsweek cited an August poll from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that showed 40 percent of Muslim voters in Michigan supported Stein. Former President Donald Trump nabbed 18 percent and Harris received just 12 percent support.
“Michigan has more than 200,000 Muslim voters and 300,000 with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry,” the outlet notes. “Biden won there in 2020 by 154,000 votes, while Trump carried the state with a victory margin of just 10,700—or 0.23 percent—in 2016.”
The CAIR poll also showed Stein leading Harris in Arizona, with 35 percent support, and Wisconsin, with 44 percent.
In a national CAIR poll of American Muslims, Stein trails Harris slightly, receiving 29.1 percent to the vice president’s 20.4 percent.
“Third Way found that, based on polling averages in battleground states, the 2020 margin of victory for Democrats would be lost in four states—Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin—because of third party support," Stein said. "So they can't win. There's a fair amount of data now that suggests the Democrats have lost. Unless they give up their genocide."
She added: "We're doing outreach all the time to a lot of different groups but it's really been the Muslim Americans and Arab Americans who have really taken this campaign on like it's theirs—like they have enormous ownership over this."
Democratic National Committee spokesperson Adrienne Watson told Newsweek: "Jill Stein is a spoiler for Trump who is working hand in hand with Republican consultants and Trump's former personal lawyer to get her on the ballot in swing states. This will be a close election and the only way to stop Donald Trump is by voting for Vice President Harris."
"I'm not preparing myself to be considered a spoiler because I reject the notion. Democracy is about political choices," Stein said. "[Democrats] rely on fear-mongering to extort your vote, because they know they can't earn your vote, because they're working for Wall St and the war machine—they're not working for you. Working people are thrown under the bus."
After Stein received 1.07 percent of the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton blamed the Green Party candidate for her loss.
"So in each state, there were more than enough Stein voters to swing the result, just like Ralph Nader did in Florida and New Hampshire in 2000," Clinton wrote in her 2017 book What Happened.
In March, Stein told SCNR News that the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas was a response to “75 years of murderous occupation.”
“I always condemn all violations of human rights,” she said during a New York City rally to honor U.S. Air Force member Aaron Bushnell, who committed suicide by self-immolation last month to raise awareness about the genocide of Palestinians.
“At the same time, it’s very important for people to remember that didn’t come out of nowhere. That was a response to basically 75 years of murderous occupation,” she said. “In my view, none of this is justified. I really understand where the Zionists were coming from: a place of great trauma themselves. That doesn’t justify, then, occupation and apartheid. We’re in this situation that, from the standing way back, you could say this is violence propagating violence. We must stop it all now.”
When asked if she would condemn the attack specifically, without qualifiers, Stein responded, “I feel like you’re trying to extract October 7 as if it didn’t have 75 years leading up to it.”
