Jill Stein, the US presidential candidate you may never have heard of

In Michigan, hundreds of thousands of Arab American voters remain angry and torn over Kamala Harris' approach to Israel's war in Gaza, as ITV News' Correspondent Rachel Younger reports

She is the 2024 US Presidential candidate, you’ve probably never heard of. The Green Party’s Dr Jill Stein - who is barely mentioned by American media.

She is only polling at around one per cent - depending on your perspective, that could be the reason for her lack of coverage or the result of it.

But either way, her tiny share of the vote could have a mighty impact on the outcome and nowhere more so than in the crucial swing state of Michigan.

We travelled to Detroit, a city that has a higher proportion of Arab Americans than anywhere else in the country.

In places like Dearborn, an affluent suburb famous for the largest mosque in America, the Democrats could once take most Muslim votes for granted. But not any more.

The Democrats decision to keep arming Israel in its war on Gaza and Lebanon has changed everything here.

I meet local Imam Sayed Hassan Al-Qazwini, who tells me he doesn’t know a single member of his 3,000 strong congregation voting for Kamala Harris.

Dr Stein is the only presidential candidate who says she’s willing to use US resources to back up an immediate ceasefire.

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That’s attracting some worshippers here - others, he says, plan to stay away from the polls altogether. Otherwise he tells me, it’s a choice between two evils - Trump, with his history of racism or Harris.

“If you vote for her you feel like you are enabling a genocide”, he tells me. That term remains deeply controversial in many quarters and is strongly rejected by the Israeli government, but in Detroit, it is used by almost everyone I meet.

I expected to find fear that a protest vote would let in a man who called for a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering America and who has historically been very supportive of Israel.

Instead, I was told that when Trump was last president “there were no wars”, while others spoke of his determination to bring the war to an end.

Nancy Jafaar, whose family come from Lebanon, agreed to meet the former President at a campaign event because she wanted to talk to him about the crisis in American healthcare.

She was impressed with how closely he listened. But what's really driving her vote for Trump is fury with the Democrat’s refusal to stop arming Israel.

A successful businesswoman, she can’t bear to see another dollar of her taxes funding that policy.

“There is an assumption that if you are from the Lebanese or Palestinian community Donald Trump won’t get your vote. I find it so shocking that people have that narrative.

“Why are we discussing someone who might hypothetically do something against an administration that is already doing the killing?

“We just want to find someone who won’t kill us.”

With the polls now so close, the Democrats have been running attack ads warning that a vote for the Greens is a vote for Trump.

They might have a point. In 2016, the number of votes cast for Dr Stein in Michigan was bigger than Trump’s margin of victory against Hilary Clinton.

But when I put that to Dr Stein she is unrepentant, arguing that many of her voters would stay away from the polling booth entirely if there wasn’t a third option this time.

“For example in the last election one of every three eligible voters chose not to vote, rejecting the two major party candidates, those zombie political parties” she told me.

“Kamala has actually lost those votes on her own, people are pissed, so the harder the Democrats come at us the more it actually boosts awareness that there is an option out there.”

She tells me she is playing the long game, that she is sensing more enthusiasm from young voters by the day and that the US could have a Green president within her lifetime.

But in many corners of America, a vote that changes anything feels increasingly elusive.

In Dearborn, perhaps more than anywhere, it's hard to find much faith in American democracy.

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