|
Inter Press Service – October 25, 2006
Muslim and Arab Americans Ditch Republicans
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Oct 25, 2006 (IPS) - Increasingly disillusioned with more than five years of the "global war on terror", Arab- and Muslim-American voters are poised to vote heavily Democratic in the Nov. 7 mid-term elections, according to two polls released this week.
Strong majorities of Arab-American voters in four key states -- Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida -- intend to vote for the Democratic candidates for senator, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Arab American Institute (AAI).
The same poll, conducted by Zogby International (ZI), found that a whopping 76 percent of Arab Americans disapprove of the performance of President George W. Bush, who received a 46 percent plurality of the Arab-American vote when he was first elected to office six years ago.
Asked which party they would prefer to control Congress, 57 percent of Arab Americans chose Democrats, while only 26 percent said they favored Republican control. That was a considerably larger gap than the general voting public which, according to a CNN poll released Tuesday, favors a Democratic Congress by a 57-40 percent margin.
Another survey of Muslim-American voters released here by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Tuesday also found widespread disillusionment with Bush, for whom a majority of Muslim Americans voted in 2000, particularly regarding the war on terror and foreign policy.
That poll, conducted by Genesis Research Associates in August, found that only 17 percent of Muslim-American voters consider themselves Republican now, while a plurality of 42 percent said they were Democrats and 28 percent said they did not belong to either party.
The same survey, in which Muslims were identified from voting records by common names prevalent among Muslims and thus did not include converts who did not change their legal names, also found widespread disapproval of the U.S. policies toward the Islamic world.
Seven in 10 respondents agreed with the statement, "A just resolution to the Palestinian cause would improve America's standing in the Muslim world;" two-thirds said they were in favor of "working toward normalization of relations with Iran"; and 55 percent agreed with the assertion that "The war on terror has become a war on Islam."
Some seventy percent of Muslim voters said they disagreed (46 percent "strongly disagreed") with the proposition that "The war in Iraq has been worthwhile for America," while only 12 percent said they believed that it was. By contrast, only 39 percent of the U.S. general public currently believes that the U.S. military action in Iraq was the "right thing", according to the most recent Newsweek poll published this week.
While overlapping, the CAIR and AAI poll represent different constituencies. About two-thirds of the roughly 3.5 million Arab Americans living here are Christian -- mostly either Roman Catholic or Orthodox -- rather than Muslim.
Similarly, only about 40 percent of Muslim Americans or their ancestors hail from the Arab world. Nearly one in three is of Asian ancestry, another six percent is African, and five percent Iranian. Of the roughly five million Muslim Americans, about one million are registered to vote, according to Mohamed Nimer, who conducted the CAIR survey.
In 2000, Bush gained the largest percentage of votes from both groups due primarily to his outspoken opposition to ethnic profiling and the widespread impression, based on the performance of his father's administration from 1989 to 1993, that he would be more sympathetic to Arab and Palestinian aspirations than the administration of President Bill Clinton.
That impression, of course, turned out to be unfounded as Bush, more than any other modern president, has aligned his Middle East policies behind those of the Israeli government. And while publicly, Bush still opposes ethnic profiling, reports of hate crimes and harassment of suspected Arab- and Muslim-Americans have risen sharply since the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
While the Arab-American population is disproportionately concentrated in a relatively few states, notably California and New York, AAI and Zogby have focused their polling over the past six years on the four "battleground" states, both because of the residence there of a significant numbers of Arab-American voters and because the electorates of all four are divided roughly evenly between Democrats and Republicans…...
According to the poll, Arab Americans consider corruption to be the single most important issue in deciding how they vote, followed closely by the war in Iraq, civil liberties, Palestine, and Lebanon. By a margin of more than two to one, respondents said they believed Democrats would do a better job than Republicans on each issue.
Like Arab Americans, Muslim-American voters considered domestic issues, rather than foreign policy, to be most important. Nearly half rated either civil liberties or education at the top of their list, while 20 percent named "conflicts in Palestine and Lebanon" as their most important concern, and 18 percent cited the "wars in Afghanistan and Iraq"…..
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35230
Cox News Service – October 25, 2006
Muslim voters could sway close contests
By Julia Malone
Muslim voters strongly oppose the war in Iraq and tilt toward Democrats in next month's congressional elections, a poll released Tuesday by a leading Islamic civil-rights organization has found.
The poll, sponsored by the Council on Islamic-American Relations, suggested a potential voting bloc that could affect close races in the midterm elections Nov. 7.
It pointed to deep disaffection with the Bush administration, with 55 percent of the American Muslim respondents saying they feared that "the war on terror has become a war on Islam." Only 12 percent said the war in Iraq has been worth the effort.
The survey indicates a strong Democratic affiliation among Muslims. Forty-two percent identified themselves as Democrats, 17 percent said they are Republicans and 28 percent said they belong to no party.
The poll findings signal "a political comeback" for American Muslims, who have been on the defensive in the five years since 9-11, said council Executive Director Nihad Awad.
Awad said the community now has high hopes that the first Muslim will be elected to the House. Keith Ellison, a Muslim convert, is the Democratic Party nominee in a traditionally Democratic district in Minneapolis. . .
Nihad Awad, the council's executive director, said the study shows that most American Muslims are "centrists" who "care for America." Eighty-nine percent of respondents said they vote regularly, 86 percent said they celebrate the Fourth of July and 64 percent said they fly the U.S. flag.
Eighty-two percent of respondents said the 9-11 attacks had harmed U.S. Muslims.
Leading political pollster John Zogby, who has criticized some of the council's surveys in the past, said the new findings track his own studies. "One in three Muslims tell us they have experienced some form of discrimination and also a heightened awareness that they really need to become involved," Zogby said.
With the total Muslim voting population estimated to be around 2 million nationwide and clustered in urban areas, they could affect the outcome of a tight contest, he said.
Zogby said he is watching statewide races in Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Missouri as well as Tennessee and Virginia. "Even 1 1/2 percent of the voting population can loom very large" in those elections, he said……..
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/15843672.htm
Telegram & Gazette – October 25, 2006
Massachusetts Muslims back
Democratic gubernatorial candidate
By Bronislaus B. Kush
Local Muslims are rallying around Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick and are working to defeat Question 1, the ballot initiative that would allow for an expansion of wine sales in grocery stores, leaders in the Islamic community said.
Tahir Ali, a spokesman for the Worcester Islamic Center, said area Muslims believe Mr. Patrick can do a better job looking out for the interests of working-class Massachusetts families.
He said there's also strong concern about the attitude of Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, the Republican candidate, toward the Muslim community. Mr. Ali said there's fear, rightly or wrongly, among many that Ms. Healey may hold beliefs that are similar to those of her boss, Gov. Mitt Romney.
The governor, for example, drew the ire of the Muslim community when, in a speech on homeland security last fall before the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, he suggested that some mosques be bugged to monitor students from nations accused of sponsoring terrorism.
The comments about local Muslim support for Mr. Patrick come on the heels of a poll released yesterday by a prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group that indicates that Muslim voters nationwide are leaning toward the Democratic Party.
In a poll of 1,000 registered Muslim voters conducted on behalf of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, 42 percent said they consider themselves Democrats, while 17 percent said they are Republican, and 28 percent said they had no party affiliation.
http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061025/NEWS/610250405
|
