As the pro-Palestinian campus protests heat up, so do the electoral politics around it. For months, the drumbeat of dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s support for Israel has been growing, even as the president has been ramping up pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change his scorched-earth policy in Gaza. With civilian casualties topping 30,000, the pressure for many has come too late.
Meanwhile, desperate to find a distraction from Donald Trump’s legal problems, Republicans have seized upon the protests to paint a picture of leftist chaos and rampant antisemitism. The combination of Democratic dissatisfaction over the administration’s policy and Republican efforts to capitalize on it raises the question of whether this could be harm President Joe Biden’s re-election chances.
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Normally, foreign policy doesn’t make that much of a difference to most voters. They care about economic issues. High interest rates and the perception that inflation is still raging are probably hurting Biden a lot more than any other issue. Even though the economy is by objective measures doing quite well, most voters feel it isn’t.
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But that doesn’t mean that the war in Gaza isn’t a problem for Democrats. There are two reasons why it’s a threat to Biden’s campaign.
For one, as the campus protests show, for many younger voters, the administration is clearly on the wrong side of the issue. A Harvard Institute of Politics poll found that voters under 30 favor an immediate ceasefire by a margin of five to one. Still, only two percent of young voters cited the war as their top concern, putting the economy at the top instead. However, as time goes on, there’s concern that number may grow.
Losing 57,000 Democratic votes in Massachusetts is a bit like losing a French fry at McDonald’s. There are plenty more to replace it. But losing 100,000 votes in Michigan is a serious problem. He only won the state by fewer than 155,000 votes in 2020. In a very tight race—which this election is shaping up to be—Biden can’t afford to lose any voters.
Yet his support among young voters is also dwindling, and it has been for years. Younger voters simply aren’t thrilled with the octogenarian in the Oval Office, and the war isn’t helping any. Their support was critical to getting Biden over the finish line in 2020, and losing any part of it puts his re-election in jeopardy.
Republicans are doing their best to inflame the situation by making the campus protests look like Biden’s fault, a world of woke run amok. That may play well with some voters, especially older ones. And Trump gets to play the strong man, insisting something like this would never happen on his watch.
But for those unhappy with the administration’s current policy, Donald Trump isn’t likely to be the alternative. The most probable outcome would be voters turning to a third-party candidate or sitting it out.
“They might not show [up],” Adam Berinsky, a political scientist at MIT, told The Atlantic.
A lot can happen in the next six months. The threat that Trump presents may lead people to decide to vote for Biden despite their disagreement about the war. (After all, Trump is not the candidate to protect the rights of Muslims.) Biden may force Israel to change course. Other issues could overtake the current focus on the war.
But in the meantime, the war is raising the stakes in the election. The protests may die down, but the impact will linger. Whether they linger long enough to make a difference on Election Day is the big question.
