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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (612296)	8/27/2004 10:24:48 PM
From: Andrew N. Cothran	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Arab Americans favor Kerry over Bush, poll indicates War in Iraq seen as main reason for shift from GOP Jason B. Johnson, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, August 27, 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A majority of Arab Americans strongly opposes President Bush's handling of the Iraq war and many favor Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry in this year's presidential election, according to a new nationwide poll of Americans of Middle Eastern descent. In the 2000 election, Bush won a majority of the Arab American vote. Experts say this shift could have a major impact in swing states with large Arab American populations such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. "There's a significant concentration of Arab American voters (where states) are up for grabs," said Ben Jealous, director of Amnesty International's domestic human rights program. "This seems to be a swing constituency that seems to have been very supportive of the Republican Party in 2000. Now it seems this constituency might be swinging toward Kerry." The study of 600 Arab, Iranian and Pakistani Americans was conducted for the human rights group Amnesty International and New California Media, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group. "We have a poll that shows a strong rejection of President Bush's policies in Iraq, and a suggestion that we withdraw our troops as soon as possible," said Sergio Bendixen, president of the Miami-based firm that conducted the poll. Respondents from all but six states were questioned in languages such as Arabic, Farsi and Urdu between July 31 and Aug. 18, as fighting continued in Iraq and new terror warnings were issued at home. The report says Arab Americans have "starkly negative" views of the Bush administration's actions in Iraq. Forty-nine percent of Arab American registered voters questioned said they would vote for Kerry. Sixteen percent said they would vote for Bush, while 14 percent support third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who is of Arab descent. An estimated 3 million Arab Americans live in the United States. Longtime Bush supporter Ahmad Miski, executive director of the Arab American Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., said he sadly agrees with the poll's findings. "I like Bush better," said Miski. "(But) most Arabs, I'd say 80 percent of them, are favoring the Democrats because of the war. It's not my personal view, but that is the (prevailing view)." Miski said many were happy at the start of the war when Saddam Hussein was removed from power. But months of violence in Iraq and the failing Israeli- Palestinian peace effort have turned sentiment against Bush. Celena Khatib is assistant director of the Michigan chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations -- the home state of many Iraqi Americans of the Shiite faith. She said 68 percent of local mosque attendees are registered voters. "I definitely feel that our community is going to be a big deal in this election," said Khatib, whose group plans to hold a town hall meeting in Michigan in October to discuss the race. Helei Omeria, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the CAIR, agreed with Miski that people are disturbed by events in Iraq and between the Israelis and Palestinians. "I think people are just extremely frustrated," said Omeria. Among the poll's findings: -- 73 percent of Arab Americans gave Bush negative marks on his Iraq policy; 60 percent rate his handling of Iraq as "poor" while another 13 percent rated his performance as "mediocre." -- 55 percent of Arab Americans say going to war with Iraq was the wrong decision, and 54 percent believe the president deliberately misled the public about his reason for going to war. -- Iranians were less suspicious of U.S. intentions in the Middle East than Arab or Pakistani Americans and more willing to see Iraq as part of the war against terrorism. By contrast, less than half of Arab Americans and only one fourth of Pakistani Americans believe it is part of the war on terror. -- Arab Americans have experienced more discrimination and are over three times more likely than the non-Latino white population to have experienced racial profiling since the Sept. 11 attacks. For Pakistani Americans and for the Muslims polled, those numbers were even higher. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points for the 400 Arabs sampled and plus or minus 9 points for the samples of 100 Pakistanis and Iranians.