AMPCC. Even so, based on the sense among Muslims that in 1996 they had suffered from a lack of guidance, they felt it necessary to create a unified body that would wholeheartedly endorse a single presidential candidate. In 1996, the five major Islamist organizations had met and tried to endorse a single candidate, but at the last minute the AMC pulled out of the budding coalition, MPAC wavered, and the others lost their nerve, “worrying that their members might not understand that the goal was to demonstrate the community’s ability to vote as a bloc, not to pick a winner.” As a result, the AMC and MPAC backed Bill Clinton, while the National Council on Islamic Affairs (NCIA) endorsed Bob Dole, and the AMA and CAIR took no position.
In late 1997, chastened by their experience the previous year, the AMA, AMC, CAIR, MPAC, the American Muslim Caucus, and the NCIA formed what would become the American Muslim Political Coordination Committee (AMPCC) with the expressed intention of forging a single political forum. This time, stressing the theme of cooperation, the AMPCC intended to hold regular meetings to decide strategy.
The expected closeness of election 2000 amplified AMPCC’s voice, especially given Muslim concentrations in such key battleground states as Michigan, California, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, and Florida. On October 23, two weeks before the presidential election, AMPCC called a press conference in Washington, D.C., to announce its endorsement of George W. Bush for president. Its head, Agha Saeed, explained why:
Governor Bush took the initiative to meet with local and national representatives of the Muslim community. He also promised to address Muslim concerns on domestic and foreign policy issues.
How Muslims Voted in 2000
In all, how did Muslims vote? In July 2000, CAIR released a survey of 755 individuals taken the previous month. The utility of the poll is questionable, as it resulted from forms “faxed and e-mailed to individuals and organizations within CAIR’s nationwide network” (suggesting a strong Islamist bias). Anyway, it found that although 90 percent indicated an intention to vote, 25 percent of Muslims “have not decided who to vote for or are not satisfied with any of the candidates.” Of those who did support a candidate, Gore was ahead of Bush by 33 percent to 28 percent (followed by Pat Buchanan at 7 percent and Ralph Nader at 5 percent).
CAIR’s surveys purportedly show that Muslim voting intentions underwent a sea-change within a few months of November 7. A CAIR poll of 1,022 individuals, released in mid-October, found that 40 percent of eligible Muslim voters now planned to back Bush, and just 24 percent for Gore; Nader had quadrupled his ratings to 20 percent. Only 8 percent registered as undecided.
In a straw poll conducted during a Muslim leadership meeting in Chicago on October 17, 2000, an audience of 200 persons (again, strongly biased toward Islamists) responded with 69 percent for Bush, 12 percent for Gore and 16 percent for a third or fourth party candidate. Between October 27 and November 2, IslamOnline.net held an online poll of 446 presumably Islamist respondents and found Bush with 54 percent, Gore with 9 percent, and Nader with 34 percent.
The alleged final numbers, according to a CAIR poll released after the election, were 72 percent for Bush, 8 percent for Gore and 19 percent for Nader. Nationally, in a “post-election telephone poll,” the AMA found that “more than 80 percent” went for Bush, 9 percent for Gore, and 10 percent for Nader. If Ralph Nader had not run on the Green Party line, the figures for Bush would have reflected Muslim and immigrant dissatisfaction with Gore to an even greater extent. (This is not because Greenism is popular with Muslims but that they were attracted to Nader’s Lebanese background and his outspoken views on the Middle East.)
To the extent that these surveys conducted by Islamist organizations have validity, they indicate a hemorrhaging of votes from the other candidates to Bush in the final months. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and the GOP’s pointman for attracting Muslims, argues that “Bush’s talk about outreach and inclusion had extraordinary results—the Muslim community went 2-1 for Bill Clinton [in 1996] and almost 8-1 for Bush.”
It should be emphasized that these are hardly impartial or authoritative numbers but the results of unscientific and dubious self-administered surveys. Accordingly, there is no way of knowing whether they accurately represent Muslim-in-the-street opinion or just mirror what Islamic activists think. An important insight can be gained, however, by looking closely at the Muslim vote in the key battleground state of Michigan.