Islamophobia key factor for Muslims in US Elections

Washington - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, released on Tuesday the results of a six-state survey indicating that 73 percent of registered Muslim voters say they will go to the polls in upcoming primary elections and that 67 percent will vote for Democratic Party candidates.

CAIR’s Muslim voter survey also indicated that more than half of respondents said they would support Hillary Clinton in the elections (51.62 percent), followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (22.03 percent) and Donald Trump (7.47 percent).

Growing Islamophobia in America was ranked as the most important issue for Muslim voters. Domestic issues like the economy and health care also topped the Muslim voters' list of priority concerns in this election. It is noteworthy that Islamophobia was listed as the third-ranked issue in a similar 2014 CAIR survey.

CAIR’s survey of almost 2000 registered Muslim voters in California, New York, Illinois, Florida, Texas, and Virginia - the states with the highest Muslim populations - was conducted on January 26 using an independent automated call survey provider and asked four questions:

1. "Do you plan to vote in your upcoming state primary election?"

2. "Which political party do you plan to support in your upcoming state primary election?"

3. “Based on your party support which candidate do you plan to vote for in the upcoming state primary election?”

4. “What is the most important issue to you in the 2016 presidential election?”

“The increase in the number of Muslim voters who say they will go to the polls in their primary elections indicates a high level of civic participation that may be driven at least in part by concern over the rise in Islamophobia nationwide,” said CAIR Government Affairs Manager Robert McCaw.

The number of Muslim voters who say they will turn out for the primary elections is higher than in a similar poll for the 2014 midterm elections.

McCaw noted that on April 18, CAIR will join other members of the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a coalition of leading national and local American Muslim organizations, at the second annual National Muslim Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. USCMO recently announced a drive to register one million voters prior to the 2016 presidential election.