Arab-Americans Dissatisfied with Bush - Poll
By Deborah Zabarenko
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arab-Americans in four battleground states have "deep dissatisfaction" with George W. Bush's policies and low support for the president's re-election, a poll showed on Friday.
This is a shift from the 2000 presidential campaign, when Arab-Americans in Michigan, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- all expected to be closely contested this year -- strongly favored Bush, a Republican, over Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites).
"This community's vote is decidedly moving in a direction that is not in favor of Bush's re-election," said James Zogby of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, which commissioned the tracking poll.
The poll found Arab-Americans rated Bush lowest for his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of three issues of greatest importance to this group of voters. The others were civil liberties, which Arab-Americans have seen as being under pressure since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and the war in Iraq (news - web sites). On these issues as well, those polled gave Bush low marks.
The four states are among the top 10 states in terms of Arab-American population, and represent a total of 510,000 likely voters. All have seen rapid growth in the size of their Arab-American communities in the last decade.
Voter turnout among members of this community is slightly higher than in the U.S. population as a whole.
The poll showed 32 percent of Arab-Americans across the four states rated Bush excellent or good for his overall job performance -- down from 38 percent in January -- and only 28 percent said he deserves to be re-elected. Sixty-five percent said it was time to elect "someone new."
In 2000, 46 percent said they voted for Bush, compared with 29 percent for Gore, while this year, 27 percent favored Bush and 43 favored John Kerry (news - web sites), the Democratic presidential candidate.
Another 20 percent favored independent candidate Ralph Nader (news - web sites), an Arab-American, this year as compared to 13 percent in 2000.
The poll "recorded deep dissatisfaction with the policies of the Bush administration and very low Arab-American support for the re-election of President Bush (news - web sites)," said Zogby, a member of the Democratic National Committee (news - web sites).
Zogby said Kerry could capitalize on Arab-Americans' unease with Bush. "Where a shift could take place is for John Kerry," he said. "Arab-Americans don't know him yet."
NADER PULLS VOTES FROM KERRY
Nader's entry into the race took potential Arab-American votes from both Bush and Kerry, but Kerry would lose more, the poll found.
If the election were held now, the poll found Bush would get 30 percent of the Arab-American vote in the four battleground states, compared with 54 percent for Kerry, 5 percent for other and 11 percent saying they were not sure who would get their vote.
Among the individual states in the poll, Arab-Americans in Ohio gave Bush the biggest slice of their support, at 50 percent compared with Kerry's 34 percent.
In Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania, Kerry got 52 percent, 54 percent and 73 percent, respectively. Bush got 27 percent of the Michigan Arab-American vote, 31 percent in Florida and 20 percent in Pennsylvania.
In terms of religion, 35 percent of Arab-Americans in the four states listed themselves as Catholic, 28 percent as Orthodox/Protestant, 24 percent Muslim and 13 percent no affiliation or "other."
The tracking poll, which will be repeated four more times before the Nov. 2 election day, was conducted by Zogby International, a polling organization headed by Zogby's brother John. It had an error margin of plus or minus 4.5 percent.