A survey released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reveals that almost 68% of Muslims in the US will vote for the incumbent President Barack Obama in today’s polls.
Today, Americans are expected to elect their next President, along with a host of House and Senate members.
The survey, with a sample size of 500 registered Muslim voters nationwide, reveals that 7% of the respondents would opt for the Mitt Romney Republican Party candidate and that 25% of voters are still undecided.
“These results indicate that a large percentage of American Muslim voters are still open to appeals from presidential candidates and that American Muslims are potentially in a position to decide this year’s election,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.
Robert McCaw, the Government Affairs Coordinator at CAIR, says that this could not just be about Mitt Romney, but his Republican Party as a whole.
“In 2000, 90% of Muslims had voted for George Bush, it’s because he had strong outreach to the Muslim community, in addition to other Republican candidates. We see that in this election, the Romney campaign has not done a good job in reaching out to the Muslim voters and also his party, at the federal and state level have adopted 73 anti-Muslim, anti-foreign law bills, targeting Muslims and the practise of their faith,” he said according to the The Express Tribune.
McCaw further said Muslims are not happy with the anti-foreign and anti-Sharia bills sponsored by the Republican Party. However, whether that negative impact is felt on Election Day will only be apparent when the polls close.
According to the US Religious Census of 2010, released this year by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, Muslims made up nearly one percent of the population in the US in the year 2010.
Some of the states with large number of Muslims include Illinois, Michigan, New York and New Jersey.
