Trump’s Unlikely Victory Among Arab Americans and Right-Wing Jews

It is an extraordinary new coalition. Along the way to his decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump drew at least some Arab American and Muslim voters who are outraged by the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza. He managed to do so without alienating the right-leaning American Jews who see Mr. Trump as Israel’s strongest champion.

Even in an election marked by a reordering of the country’s traditional political teams, these strange bedfellows stand out. The two groups hold sharply divergent expectations for the president-elect. And both strongly pro-Israel Trump voters and some of Mr. Trump’s Arab American backers are skeptical that his ascent this week is the start of a durable cross-ideological, interfaith coalition.

But in Dearborn, Mich., a majority-Arab city, Ms. Harris won just 36 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results, a roughly 34-percentage-point drop from Mr. Biden’s share of the 2020 vote in similar results released after that election. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate to the left of Ms. Harris, picked up 18 percent of the vote. But Mr. Trump’s support also jumped — to 42 percent of the vote from less than 30 percent four years ago, though turnout was lower.

But in interviews throughout the campaign, Arab American and Muslim supporters said they were ready to take a chance on him anyway.

Some were already aligned with the socially conservative views of the Republican Party. Many were nostalgic for the relative quiet of 2019.

They also noted his efforts to campaign in Dearborn and the time spent in the area by his surrogates, especially Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman and an in-law of Mr. Trump’s, and Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and acting intelligence chief.

By contrast, they said, they saw Ms. Harris as inaccessible to the community.