WASHINGTON DC – As the United States prepares for November presidential elections, American Muslim community is poised to play a key role in swing states during the upcoming polls, amid rising calls to register for voting.
“When the vote is close, then in fact, the Muslim vote in those swing states can play a significant role. They … will be seen as a significant minority community,” Georgetown University Islamic studies professor John Esposito told Voice of America on July 23.
According to the Pew Research Center, Muslims represent just 1 to 2 percent of the country’s population.
However, the majority of the 3.3 million community lives in strategic places, or swing states, like Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
When the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based rights organization, launched its 2016 Muslims Vote campaign, the goal was to lead 1 million Muslim constituents to the voting booths.
Robert McCaw, director of government affairs at CAIR, said campaign organizers across the nation would work within communities to make sure Islamic community centers have the tools they need to register voters.
According to Esposito, the campaign aimed at getting a million US Muslims to register to vote will certainly play to the advantage of the Democratic candidate.
“There certainly are Republican Muslims but they are a significant minority, and given [Republican presidential nominee Donald] Trump’s position with regards to Muslims … I don’t see many Muslims being attracted to Trump,” Esposito, who directs the university’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, said.
A February 2016 survey of 2,000 Muslim American voters by CAIR showed that two-thirds of them supported the Democratic Party, with 15 percent to 18 percent voicing support for the Republican Party.
CAIR notes that as of June 2016, there were 824,000 registered Muslim voters, and that more than 300,000 had registered since the 2012 presidential election.
Rather than pulling Muslim votes, or even Latino votes, to the Republican Party, Trump is pushing them away, Esposito said.
Trump has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country and has praised the leadership of the late Saddam Hussein, who was deposed as Iraq’s president.
“A candidate might say, ‘These people don’t normally vote, or overwhelmingly, or significantly, for Republicans,’ but a candidate might say, ‘I can get some policies that would attract them,’ but Trump has done just the opposite,” Esposito added.
McCaw and other members of CAIR, who attended the Republican National Convention, said they had “one clear” message to deliver.
“That was for the Republican Party to make itself a welcoming place for American Muslims and to stop the practice of political Islamophobia,” he said.