Arab Americans will vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump by 59 to 35 percent and their greatest concern is “race relations in the US,” according to new survey by the Arab American Institute.
Forty percent of Arab Americans voters cited race relations as the most important issue, and 70 percent said they had a “positive view of the nationwide demonstrations in support of Black lives,” as Maya Berry of AAI notes.
Arab Americans are a key constituency in a swing state, Michigan, making up 5 percent of all voters. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, they are as much as 2 percent, the Institute says. And Arab Americans are expected to turn out at higher rates than Americans overall.
Other issues of primary importance (to the 805 Arab American voters surveyed two weeks ago) were jobs and the economy (23) percent, health care (21), climate change (17), and gun violence (15). On all these issues, except for “jobs and the economy,” Biden was favored over Trump by a large margin.
“Solving the Israeli Palestinian conflict” was way down the list, at 5 percent. (This is similar to surveys of American Jews showing that only 5 percent assign top priority to foreign policy; though only 12 percent of Jews see race relations as the top issue).
Trump’s numbers are actually better for the president than expected. Back in 2016 Arab Americans supported Hillary Clinton over Trump by a larger margin, 58 to 25 percent. Trump’s 35 percent this time seems to reflect the fact that Arab-Americans are more Republican than they have been since the Iraq war, and today their breakdown is not so different from the general American party divide: Dems hold a fairly narrow advantage of 40-33 percent over Republicans among Arab Americans. In 2016 that divide was 52 percent to 26 percent Dem to GOP. Today’s party identification numbers are similar to 2002 and 2004 when it was 39% to 31%, James Zogby of the AAI said in reviewing the study Tuesday.
Support for the anti-racism protests is so broad in the Arab American community that it includes many Trump supporters
Another surprise is the conservatism of middle-aged Arab-Americans. Trump and Biden are virtually tied among Arab Americans between 30 and 49 years of age (48 percent Biden, 47 percent Trump).
While Biden’s advantage is largest among Arab Americans under 30 (67% to
27%) and senior citizens (66% to 26%).
Religion also divided Arab Americans politically. Biden runs up the score among Catholics (55% to 43%), and Muslims (60% to 30%), while 78 percent of the non-religious are for Biden. But Protestant/Orthodox Christian Arab-Americans are virtually split on the candidates.
Some other findings from the survey:
The issue of deteriorating race relations looms large for Arab American voters with 70%
saying they have a positive view of the nationwide demonstrations supporting Black lives and 74% holding critical views of policing practices in the US.And by margin of 49% to 33%, Arab American voters said they believe that Biden would be better than the sitting president at improving US relations with the Arab world.
Some of the charts from the survey:
Summary: “Arab-Americans” are just as “overwhelmingly” lost as the rest of Americans.
Not their fault? Should all the blame go to the dishonest propaganda employee who conveniently forgot to list “Empire” or “Aggression” among the 14 items that were supposed to be “issues”?