A new poll issued by the Arab American Institute (pdf here) yesterday and conducted by JZ Analytics reports that President Obama maintains a commanding lead over Governor Mitt Romney in the election but that Obama’s edge has dropped by 15% since the 2008 election.
Arab-Americans are defecting from both both the GOP and the Democratic Party and are increasingly identifying as Independents (24%), according to James Zogby. That said Arab-American Dems stand at 46% of their population as compared to 22% who are GOPers.
In terms of what Arab-Americans thought was “very important” in guiding their presidential vote, the economy ranked far ahead of other issues. In rank order, health care came next; followed by civil liberties, taxes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and US outreach to the Muslim Worlds.
In every category, Obama beat Romney in Arab-American voter perceptions of being able to deal with key issues of the day. Obama’s double digit gap was least in assessment of their respective ability to manage the economy. Surprisingly, Obama’s lead on economic capability was exactly the same as the Obama-Romney gap on managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The last graph of the brief showed that ‘concerns about discrimination’ had grown among all Arab-Americans from 2010 to 2012, regardless of faith. Muslim Arab-Americans had very high levels of concern about discrimination; 7!% today as compated to 64% in 2010. 37% of Protestant Arab-American worry about discrimination with 29% of Catholics concerned.
There are reportedly 3.9 million self-identifying Arab-Americans in the United States, and an expected 1.1 million Arab-American voters in Michigan, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. The poll shows an expected advantage for President Obama of 52% to 28% in these swing states.
Nonetheless, Obama’s lead is less than that which he achieved in 2008, down to 52% from 67%.
It’s interesting to consider whether Obama’s powerful advantage with ethnic Americans has wilted ‘enough’ to give Romney an opportunity.
As National Journal‘s Ron Brownstein has written and has explained frequently on CNN, the new mathematics of this election can be framed as “80/40”. He argues that in the last election Obama won the Presidency by winning 80% of all non-white voters in the country — and won roughly 40% of white voters.
Thus, the numbers to watch regarding Romney’s challenge is whether he can take a chunk of either Obama’s non-white voter base or shove Obama’s white voter base to a level below 40%. Right now, polls show Obama roughly at the 80/40 level — but Brownstein says it’s still close.
Thus, while Obama may be clobbering Romney in absolute terms with Arab-American voters and virtually every other ethnic group, the relative gap with at least Arab-Americans has diminished.
That should worry the Obama ranks — and represents a strange kind opportunity for Team Romney in which Obama wins with many of these groups, like Arab-Americans, but doesn’t win by enough margins to win overall.
— Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons
