Why didn't Muslim Americans swing hard right in 2020?

[ProgressiveModerate]

A big theme of the 2020 election was immigrant groups, particularly those that are heavily religious and hence be more socially conservative swinging hard right, such as Cubans in South Florida, Vietnamese in Houston and Orange County, Jewish communities in NYC, Hispanics in South Texas, ect.

Muslims however were notably absent from this trend in 2020; Dearborn MI which has the highest concentration of Muslims in the US actually swung left. This is despite the fact that Muslim Americans share many similarities with the other immigrant groups listed above; heavily religious and more socially conservative. You'd think they would've seen at least a modest rightwards swing.

What's also interesting is that in 2022, Dearborn's Muslim community swung very hard right up and down the ballot despite Dems doing well statewide. Whitmer nearly lost precincts Biden and other Dems were getting 80% of the vote in. I've also noticed recently, there's been an uptick in media about younger Muslim Americans protesting LGBTQ stuff, particuarly in schools. Hamtramk MI, another heavily Muslim city that voted 86% for Biden swung hard right in 2022 and recently banned pride flags.

Why was their hard-right shift delayed until 2022 when these other groups saw it in 2020?

[Oryxslayer]

Because social conservativism is not the common thread between those listed groups. The common thread is a cultural experience with Authoritarian Socialism, which the GOP went ham on in 2020. It also had a unique salience that year with big government covid policy and civic communal support being among the most relevant issues.

Social Conservatism surged come summer 2022.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

The GOP tried to outlaw them that’s why

[TDAS04]

Didn’t Hillary Clinton underperform a bit among Muslim voters?

[Vosem]

Yeah, I think a lot of the groups that swung right in 2020 -- Hispanics who consume Spanish-language media, but also Vietnamese and Russian voters -- were people who were inclined to find the message "Democrats are weak on Venezuela/want this country to end up like Venezuela" particularly convincing. (I am a Spanish speaker, who makes a point of consuming non-English-language news to stay out of American media bubbles, and who grew up in a household with a Holodomor survivor -- so on some level it's unsurprising that I've shifted rightwards since 2018-19!)

But I don't think people living in Hamtramck would necessarily find 'muh Venezuela' very persuasive as an argument, the way I do, while 'muh trans people' might work very well as a wedge issue.

Didn’t Hillary Clinton underperform a bit among Muslim voters?

More so that Romney did, I think. He definitely took a Mormon penalty among Russian voters, since conspiracy theories about the LDS Church are very common in Russia and present among lower-info older Russian-Americans, and I wonder if something similar is true for people from Muslim countries. This wasn't an issue for Trump.

[pikachu]

Not to be too snarky but “Why muslims might have a particular distaste for donald trump?” is one of those questions with an extremely obvious answer.

Yeah, I think a lot of the groups that swung right in 2020 -- Hispanics who consume Spanish-language media, but also Vietnamese and Russian voters -- were people who were inclined to find the message "Democrats are weak on Venezuela/want this country to end up like Venezuela" particularly convincing. (I am a Spanish speaker, who makes a point of consuming non-English-language news to stay out of American media bubbles, and who grew up in a household with a Holodomor survivor -- so on some level it's unsurprising that I've shifted rightwards since 2018-19!)

But I don't think people living in Hamtramck would necessarily find 'muh Venezuela' very persuasive as an argument, the way I do, while 'muh trans people' might work very well as a wedge issue.

Adding to this, foreign language media doesn’t apply as well when looking at how Muslims would vote as they’re a linguistically much more heterogeneous group than the other listed groups.

[Хahar 🤔]

Not to be too snarky but “Why muslims might have a particular distaste for donald trump?” is one of those questions with an extremely obvious answer.

Yes, this is not a question that really needs to be asked. For future reference, there is no particular reason to think that Dearborn or Hamtramck are representative of American Muslims, who overwhelmingly do not live in majority-Muslim areas.

Didn’t Hillary Clinton underperform a bit among Muslim voters?

More so that Romney did, I think. He definitely took a Mormon penalty among Russian voters, since conspiracy theories about the LDS Church are very common in Russia and present among lower-info older Russian-Americans, and I wonder if something similar is true for people from Muslim countries. This wasn't an issue for Trump.

I feel comfortable saying that Muslims do not know or care about the LDS church. My mom was once asked by her sister what Mormons were and replied "Christian Qadianis," which may be indicative. I'm any case, the number of Muslims who would typically vote Republican is so vanishingly small that it's not worth generalizing anything about them.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Incidentally, I have a Muslim friend from college.  In 2016, he voted for Jill Stein.  Now, he lives in Egypt (where he's studying Islam) and is more socially conservative (in some ways) than I am.  He often tries to convert me by claiming that Christianity is too liberal.

[Vice President Christian Man]

I think conservative Muslims are similar to Blacks in the sense that they can be more conservative than their white counterparts but for racial reasons will continue to vote D. The only way I can see things shifting is either if the Islamaphobia on the right dies down or if the Dems treats conservative Islam the same way they treat Evangelicalism.

[Vosem]

Didn’t Hillary Clinton underperform a bit among Muslim voters?

More so that Romney did, I think. He definitely took a Mormon penalty among Russian voters, since conspiracy theories about the LDS Church are very common in Russia and present among lower-info older Russian-Americans, and I wonder if something similar is true for people from Muslim countries. This wasn't an issue for Trump.

I feel comfortable saying that Muslims do not know or care about the LDS church. My mom was once asked by her sister what Mormons were and replied "Christian Qadianis," which may be indicative. I'm any case, the number of Muslims who would typically vote Republican is so vanishingly small that it's not worth generalizing anything about them.

Fair enough. The LDS church is commonly portrayed in Russian conspiracy-theory culture as a sinister organization of CIA polygamists. Something, something, A Study in Scarlet.

Is the percentage of Muslims who typically vote Republican really that small? A quick Google search tells me (and I didn't look very hard for credible sources here, so perhaps these are not sources that should be believed) that 28% of Muslims voted Republican in 2022; 35% voted for Trump in 2020, a relative high; and 16% identify with the GOP. Muslims are a relatively small minority so these numbers aren't absolutely very large, but they're higher than for instance among African-Americans, and lots of ink has been spilled keys have been pressed on this website analyzing exactly which African-Americans are more or less likely to vote GOP.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Didn’t Hillary Clinton underperform a bit among Muslim voters?

More so that Romney did, I think. He definitely took a Mormon penalty among Russian voters, since conspiracy theories about the LDS Church are very common in Russia and present among lower-info older Russian-Americans, and I wonder if something similar is true for people from Muslim countries. This wasn't an issue for Trump.

I feel comfortable saying that Muslims do not know or care about the LDS church. My mom was once asked by her sister what Mormons were and replied "Christian Qadianis," which may be indicative. I'm any case, the number of Muslims who would typically vote Republican is so vanishingly small that it's not worth generalizing anything about them.

Fair enough. The LDS church is commonly portrayed in Russian conspiracy-theory culture as a sinister organization of CIA polygamists. Something, something, A Study in Scarlet.

Is the percentage of Muslims who typically vote Republican really that small? A quick Google search tells me (and I didn't look very hard for credible sources here, so perhaps these are not sources that should be believed) that 28% of Muslims voted Republican in 2022; 35% voted for Trump in 2020, a relative high; and 16% identify with the GOP. Muslims are a relatively small minority so these numbers aren't absolutely very large, but they're higher than for instance among African-Americans, and lots of ink has been spilled keys have been pressed on this website analyzing exactly which African-Americans are more or less likely to vote GOP.

I think “typically vote R” is sociologically useful shorthand for “GOP primary voter” in this case.  My intuition is that most non-white and/or non-Christian Trump 2020 voters aren’t reliably R.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Not to be too snarky but “Why muslims might have a particular distaste for donald trump?” is one of those questions with an extremely obvious answer.

Yes, this is not a question that really needs to be asked. For future reference, there is no particular reason to think that Dearborn or Hamtramck are representative of American Muslims, who overwhelmingly do not live in majority-Muslim areas.

Gives me similar vibes to the Jewish population here in the US. The Jewish population is largely scattered across many communities in the US, however, the communities with the most extreme concentrations like Borough Park/South Brooklyn, Lakewood, and Spring Valley tend to have the Jewish folks who are most politically distinguishable.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Didn’t Hillary Clinton underperform a bit among Muslim voters?

More so that Romney did, I think. He definitely took a Mormon penalty among Russian voters, since conspiracy theories about the LDS Church are very common in Russia and present among lower-info older Russian-Americans, and I wonder if something similar is true for people from Muslim countries. This wasn't an issue for Trump.

I feel comfortable saying that Muslims do not know or care about the LDS church. My mom was once asked by her sister what Mormons were and replied "Christian Qadianis," which may be indicative. I'm any case, the number of Muslims who would typically vote Republican is so vanishingly small that it's not worth generalizing anything about them.

Fair enough. The LDS church is commonly portrayed in Russian conspiracy-theory culture as a sinister organization of CIA polygamists. Something, something, A Study in Scarlet.

Is the percentage of Muslims who typically vote Republican really that small? A quick Google search tells me (and I didn't look very hard for credible sources here, so perhaps these are not sources that should be believed) that 28% of Muslims voted Republican in 2022; 35% voted for Trump in 2020, a relative high; and 16% identify with the GOP. Muslims are a relatively small minority so these numbers aren't absolutely very large, but they're higher than for instance among African-Americans, and lots of ink has been spilled keys have been pressed on this website analyzing exactly which African-Americans are more or less likely to vote GOP.

I think “typically vote R” is sociologically useful shorthand for “GOP primary voter” in this case.  My intuition is that most non-white and/or non-Christian Trump 2020 voters aren’t reliably R.

From my experience, most non-white/Christian/cis conservatives or far-righters are just less likely to associate with the Republican Party. Even notable influencers like Candence Owens, Rob Smith, and Blaire White have said themselves before that they don't fully identify as Republicans/Conservatives just but mostly just think the Democratic Party is too far left and that America and their communities need more conservatism/"sanity" in their communities.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Because social conservativism is not the common thread between those listed groups. The common thread is a cultural experience with Authoritarian Socialism, which the GOP went ham on in 2020. It also had a unique salience that year with big government covid policy and civic communal support being among the most relevant issues.

Social Conservatism surged come summer 2022.

This is def something I never considered and perhaps lumped these groups together, though it does seem like today a lot of social-conservatism uptick has worked on these other communities.

[Sol]

Not to be too snarky but “Why muslims might have a particular distaste for donald trump?” is one of those questions with an extremely obvious answer.

Yes, this is not a question that really needs to be asked. For future reference, there is no particular reason to think that Dearborn or Hamtramck are representative of American Muslims, who overwhelmingly do not live in majority-Muslim areas.

To supplement that, polling shows that American Muslims have more favorable attitudes towards homosexuality than evangelical protestants, and only a narrow plurality say homosexuality should be discouraged. I wouldn't be surprised if that divide runs along patterns of ethnicity, social class, and education that cash out in Hamtramck and Dearborn being more conservative on "social issues" than average, though you would know better than I would.

I suspect those numbers point to a bit of a ceiling for the GOP if they attempt to win over Muslim voters using a socially conservative appeal, and that's leaving aside the fact that socially conservative Muslims have plenty of reasons to vote for Democrats.

[Sol]

Also:







(Source: Pew)

[Bootes Void]

The 2016 election probably had Hillary Clinton portrayed as a establishment war monger cynical politician while the 2020 election might have been more a referendum on Trump rather than any opinion of Biden.

It’s entirely possible that Trump missed out on some potential gains with muslims voters as the GOP did spend a lot of effort trying to appeal to anti communist and conservative Asian and Latino voters while not spending the effort on courting conservative Muslim voters. It does seem that the 2022 elections proves this point even more

[It’s so Joever]

The misinformation campaign kicked up.

[Upper Canada Tory]

Didn’t Hillary Clinton underperform a bit among Muslim voters?

More so that Romney did, I think. He definitely took a Mormon penalty among Russian voters, since conspiracy theories about the LDS Church are very common in Russia and present among lower-info older Russian-Americans, and I wonder if something similar is true for people from Muslim countries. This wasn't an issue for Trump.

I feel comfortable saying that Muslims do not know or care about the LDS church. My mom was once asked by her sister what Mormons were and replied "Christian Qadianis," which may be indicative. I'm any case, the number of Muslims who would typically vote Republican is so vanishingly small that it's not worth generalizing anything about them.

Fair enough. The LDS church is commonly portrayed in Russian conspiracy-theory culture as a sinister organization of CIA polygamists. Something, something, A Study in Scarlet.

Is the percentage of Muslims who typically vote Republican really that small? A quick Google search tells me (and I didn't look very hard for credible sources here, so perhaps these are not sources that should be believed) that 28% of Muslims voted Republican in 2022; 35% voted for Trump in 2020, a relative high; and 16% identify with the GOP. Muslims are a relatively small minority so these numbers aren't absolutely very large, but they're higher than for instance among African-Americans, and lots of ink has been spilled keys have been pressed on this website analyzing exactly which African-Americans are more or less likely to vote GOP.

The stat about 35% of Muslims voting for Trump in 2020 comes from Associated Press exit polls, so I assume that's somewhat reliable.

I find this shocking though - that's a larger percentage than the number of Jews who voted for Trump in 2020 and the GOP does far more outreach to the Jewish community than it does to Muslims.

[Хahar 🤔]

Didn’t Hillary Clinton underperform a bit among Muslim voters?

More so that Romney did, I think. He definitely took a Mormon penalty among Russian voters, since conspiracy theories about the LDS Church are very common in Russia and present among lower-info older Russian-Americans, and I wonder if something similar is true for people from Muslim countries. This wasn't an issue for Trump.

I feel comfortable saying that Muslims do not know or care about the LDS church. My mom was once asked by her sister what Mormons were and replied "Christian Qadianis," which may be indicative. I'm any case, the number of Muslims who would typically vote Republican is so vanishingly small that it's not worth generalizing anything about them.

Fair enough. The LDS church is commonly portrayed in Russian conspiracy-theory culture as a sinister organization of CIA polygamists. Something, something, A Study in Scarlet.

Is the percentage of Muslims who typically vote Republican really that small? A quick Google search tells me (and I didn't look very hard for credible sources here, so perhaps these are not sources that should be believed) that 28% of Muslims voted Republican in 2022; 35% voted for Trump in 2020, a relative high; and 16% identify with the GOP. Muslims are a relatively small minority so these numbers aren't absolutely very large, but they're higher than for instance among African-Americans, and lots of ink has been spilled keys have been pressed on this website analyzing exactly which African-Americans are more or less likely to vote GOP.

I think “typically vote R” is sociologically useful shorthand for “GOP primary voter” in this case.  My intuition is that most non-white and/or non-Christian Trump 2020 voters aren’t reliably R.

Yes, I was specifically referring to the idea of a voter who would normally vote Republican but did not want to vote for Romney, but it doesn't really matter, because in any case the population of Muslims who would be willing to vote for a Republican for president would be a minority of a tiny minority group, which is to say that this is not worth discussing. I agree with Vosem that people on this forum talk all the time about black Republicans, but I think that this is also stupid, and I am sure that there are posts on this site by me to that effect. It was incredibly tedious reading constantly in December 2020 about the imaginary black Perdue/Warnock voter who, shockingly, turned out not to exist.

For as long as this forum has existed, white posters have been predicting that overwhelmingly Democratic minority groups will start voting Republican any day now. That these predictions keep being wrong (the first post I ever made on this forum in 2007 was in response to a prediction that Indian-American voters would swing toward Republicans) hasn't stopped people from continuing to make them. My read is that this is basically wishful thinking: that the white posters who make these sort of predictions don't have any understanding of the minority groups they talk about but really wish that they would become politically interesting.

Not to be too snarky but “Why muslims might have a particular distaste for donald trump?” is one of those questions with an extremely obvious answer.

Yes, this is not a question that really needs to be asked. For future reference, there is no particular reason to think that Dearborn or Hamtramck are representative of American Muslims, who overwhelmingly do not live in majority-Muslim areas.

Gives me similar vibes to the Jewish population here in the US. The Jewish population is largely scattered across many communities in the US, however, the communities with the most extreme concentrations like Borough Park/South Brooklyn, Lakewood, and Spring Valley tend to have the Jewish folks who are most politically distinguishable.

This isn't a perfect analogy, but it suffices in the sense that you would never use election results in New Square to draw any conclusions about American Jews, so why would you use election results in Dearborn to draw conclusions about American Muslims?

The stat about 35% of Muslims voting for Trump in 2020 comes from Associated Press exit polls, so I assume that's somewhat reliable.

I find this shocking though - that's a larger percentage than the number of Jews who voted for Trump in 2020 and the GOP does far more outreach to the Jewish community than it does to Muslims.

I would not rely on exit polls from 2020; given the circumstances of the election, voters were generally not exiting polling places, and so they were basically phone polls. Given the minuscule population involved here, there's no particular reason to assign them much weight. A result that seems unbelievable probably is.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I would also cast doubt on the 35% figure, though on slightly different grounds. For a group as relatively small in number as Muslims, the issues created by the still very real reasons to consider exit polls different in 2020, are very much magnified. If I had to guess, Trump did make gains among Muslims in 2020, but 35% way overshoots it.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Even though the GOP has shifted towards villainizing other specific groups of Americans, it's probably very difficult for American Muslims to forget how they were cast by the GOP for the better part of two decades.