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The 2024 presidential election may be one of the closest in modern U.S. history, so it should come as no surprise that both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are looking to gain the attention and support of a multigenerational Central and East European electorate—especially Americans of Polish descent living in Rust Belt swing states.
The Democrats were first to address Polish Americans when Harris challenged Trump during their September debate to explain to 800,000 Polish American voters in Pennsylvania what his position would be in the event that Russia’s war in Ukraine expands into countries like Poland. Democrats followed up with an organizing call that highlighted, “If Trump returns to power, he will sell out Ukraine and put the rest of Europe, starting with Poland, at risk.”
But Trump is making a comeback that could cost Harris votes in several battleground counties. In mid-October, he called to tell attendees gathered at the 80th anniversary event of the Polish American Congress (PAC) that Poles are courageous people and “Poland will always be safe as long as I’m president, that I can tell you. And Russia never would have invaded Ukraine if I was president.” He’s also appealing to important conservative values, saying that he will defend God, religion, family, and freedom from Harris policies that his campaign is billing as “socialist” or “communist.”
Simply alleging that Trump would abandon Poland and Ukraine, as Harris has argued, will not be enough. In order to convince voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania, she needs to address several of the Biden administration’s flawed policies, which have cost thousands of Ukrainian lives, and provide a compelling case that she will act differently.
Michigan’s Macomb County, north of Detroit, has long been seen as a barometer of U.S. elections due to its historically white working-class population with strong union membership stemming from the area’s ties to the auto industry. Based on 2023 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 113,181 people living in the county claim Polish heritage, which is about 15 percent of Michigan’s total Polish population; some even still speak Polish at home. In November 2020, Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in Macomb by 39,911 votes, but lost Michigan by 154,188 votes.
By focusing on foreign policy and security issues with these voters, Democrats are looking to shift attention away from key domestic issues, including the economy and immigration, as well as controversial progressive policies like abortion rights—a sound strategy given several findings from a recent study on Polish Americans.
According to a 2020 survey from the Piast Institute, more Polish Americans identify as conservative than liberal; they overwhelmingly state that religion is important in their lives (most are Roman Catholic); and a majority of them are in favor of abortion but only under certain circumstances. This voter profile may seem perfect for Trump, who, in 2016, carried the Polish American electorate in places like Macomb County. But the same survey showed that for 72 percent of respondents, U.S. involvement in NATO is either extremely or very important. That means the vote in counties like Macomb may be decided less by domestic issues than by foreign-policy ones—and Democrats must press their advantage if they don’t want to lose this key demographic.
Both Republicans and Democrats know what messages resonate with Polish American voters based on initiatives that mobilized the community in the past. For Polish Americans, World War I marked their arrival on the electoral scene, when they lobbied the Woodrow Wilson administration for the interests of their ancestral homeland. During World War II, they shifted their focus from humanitarian relief efforts to political lobbying under the auspices of large umbrella organizations such as the PAC, which was created in 1944. The PAC became an advocate of Polish war refugees. The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 resulted in the admission of 395,000 immigrants to the United States, of which more than 200,000 were Poles. Of these, around 38,000 settled in Michigan, including in areas in Macomb County.
These émigrés brought with them a deep distrust of communists and a hatred for the Soviet Union and Russian imperialism. The GOP painted Democrats as the “party of Yalta,” and Dwight D. Eisenhower lured them by promising a policy of liberation and rollback—checking Soviet influence and communism in Europe. To their dismay, the next few decades were marked by containment and detente.
Polish American votes helped Jimmy Carter when the Georgia governor snatched the East European ethnic narrative from President Gerald Ford during their 1976 debate, following Ford’s gaffe, which contributed to the Democrats securing the White House. “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” Ford said during the debate. “I don’t believe that the Poles consider themselves to be dominated by the Soviet Union.” Although most Poles voted for Nixon in 1972, they switched to Carter by a 60-40 margin. Key states with Polish American populations flipped from red to blue by small margins—0.2 percent in Ohio, 1.6 percent in Wisconsin, and 2.6 percent in Pennsylvania. Later, many of these immigrants became Reagan Democrats.
Today, over 8.2 million people in the United States claim Polish ancestry. While election analysis tends, at times, to not separate some voter categories (including “white”), how white ethnic groups vote is often key. Although the Polish American community is not as cohesive as it was in the past, its strength should not be underestimated as merely being a mirage.
According to American Community Survey estimates, the largest concentrations of Polish Americans are in Illinois (761,948) and New York (740,795), but there are almost as many in Michigan (720,372), Pennsylvania (695,604), and Wisconsin (441,057). Whereas Illinois and New York are not swing states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are up for grabs. All 3 have been won by margins significantly smaller than the ethnic Polish population in recent years. If the Democratic Party wants to win in November, it cannot neglect the white ethnic vote.
Harris was first to target the Polish Americans and got off to a good start. She referenced the threat from Russia as she appealed to the Polish Americans voters in Pennsylvania during the debate, then, a super PAC-funded spot referenced the trumpeter of Krakow and invaders from the east, with a headline that read: “Putin & Trump: Threat to Freedom.” For some time, it seemed that the Trump campaign may have missed its chance to seize the Central and East European narrative and gain their favor.
The former president was scheduled to visit the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, where Ronald Reagan stopped during his 1984 campaign. After Trump didn’t appear at the September event, it was suggested that he canceled his visit to instead meet with Qatari leaders at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where the shrine is located, Trump lost to Biden in 2020 by a small marging of 17,345 votes (4.37 percent), while the difference in the state overall was just 1.17 percent.
Although Trump missed an opportunity to appear before those Polish American constituents, in October—which happens to be Polish American Heritage Month in the United States—he has been making up lost ground. In his greeting to Polish Americans on the occasion of the Pulaski Day Parade, Trump stated, “We love the Polish people, and there’s nobody better. They’re great, they’re strong, they’re smart.”
He also gave an interview to a conservative television station in Poland, which enumerated the achievements of his last term, including being tough on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, increasing the number of U.S. troops stationed in Poland, helping Poland diversify its energy with American LNG, and forcing NATO countries to spend more on defense. The former president repeated that Putin would not have initiated the full-scale invasion of Ukraine if he was in the White House and that the war “threatens Poland because as the expression goes, ‘You’re next.’ You can’t have that.”
To many Polish Americans, this is a solid track record, and it has left many doubting whether Trump would really abandon Ukraine if elected in November. In an interview for the Washington Post, Trump stated that he’ll give Ukraine more aid than they have ever received if Putin does not agree to a peace deal. Even the foreign minister of Poland’s current liberal government pointed out that before the invasion began, Trump provided Ukraine with Javelin missiles that might have saved Kyiv. This was a policy that the Obama administration opposed.
So where does this leave Kamala Harris? As she struggles with convincing Arab American voters, who have abandoned the Democrats due to Biden administration’s Gaza policy, in states like Michigan, outreach to Polish Americans could counterbalance this loss.
However, if campaign strategists want to win the Polish American vote, they need to provide a plan for lasting peace in Eastern Europe, which will only happen if Russia is severely exhausted economically and militarily. This means that the vice president has to go beyond criticizing Trump and look at her administration’s mistakes.
The Biden team was slow to provide Ukraine with critical military aid, such as ATACMS long-range missiles, F-16 fighter jets, M1 Abrams tanks, Patriot missile defense systems, Gray Eagle and Reaper drones, and cluster munitions. The administration’s approach can be best described as not letting Ukraine lose but also not giving it enough to win.
While Russia systematically destroyed civilian targets, including children’s hospitals, the Biden administration denied Kyiv’s requests to use U.S.-made long-range missiles to strike military infrastructure in Russia. The White House has also been slow on the issue of transferring frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, which could have been used for reconstruction and war efforts.
It is true that Biden kept Ukraine afloat, but now Harris needs to go beyond policies of damage control. She’s started by saying that, under her watch, no peace talks would be handled without Ukraine at the table. While providing more military aid may be tricky, maintaining sanctions and levying additional ones would continue to raise Russia’s war costs. Harris also needs to make it clear that Putin apologists like Tucker Carlson or isolationists like Tulsi Gabbard may influence Trump administration policy decisions, especially when it comes to future relations with Russia and European partners.
While Trump focuses on the past and repeats that the invasion would not have started on his watch, Harris needs to focus on the future by saying how the United States will help Ukraine end the war on terms acceptable to its people. If Harris wants Polish Americans who question her positions on important everyday issues like the economy and abortion to focus on foreign policy and elect her instead of Trump, then she needs to present a clear vision for Ukraine’s victory that will keep Poland from becoming the next target on Russia’s list.