This year all the member groups are working together to register everyone in the two overlapping communities to vote. But, although there was an attempt to organize such coordinated action at the national level in 1996, it failed. The result was that, instead of forming a bloc for the presidential elections of all or nearly all of the registered voters from a combined community of some 10 million people, Muslim and Arab Americans simply went to polling places, voted their individual preferences, and for all intents and purposes cancelled each other out in the same election in which 88 percent of Jewish voters were reelecting Bill Clinton to a second term. This could easily happen again. It appears from exit polls that a slight majority of Arab Americans tend to support Democratic candidates, a clear majority of African-American or indigenous Muslims also support Democrats, and a clear majority of socially conservative immigrant Muslims and their descendents tend to support Republicans.
Total unity is impossible, as the Jewish community demonstrates.
Remember that in 1996, while 88 percent of American Jewish voters were pulling voting machine levers for the Democratic presidential candidate, the remaining 12 percent were voting for the Republican, Green, Reform or other party candidates, because that was where their first loyalties lay. And, just as within the Jewish community, some Arab Americans and Muslim Americans have become committed party activists. They vote as Democrats, Greens, Reform, or Republicans first, and Muslim Americans or Arab Americans second. That s fine. But then the great majority of American Muslims and Arab Americans and their leaders not affiliated with any political party should make up their own minds, hopefully in a coordinated way.