The French Muslim Swing Vote Posted by Shadi Hamid

This may set a bad precedent, but I accidentally stumbled onto Dinesh D'Souza's blog. And, feeling a bit adventurous, I decided to wade through some of his posts. This one about Muslims and the French elections is worth your two-minutes. His point: Muslims aren't going to "take over" Europe through sheer numbers, but, if they form a voting bloc in places like France (where they are nearly 10% of the population), they can pretty much become the decisive factor in close elections:

So Edward Gibbon's fear--that the students of Oxford and the Sorbonne might be subjected in their curriculum to the teachings of Muhammad--seems as far-fetched as ever. But there is another, more plausible, way for the Muslims to "take over," and that is to become the swing vote in closely divided European countries...While the international press is focusing on "Bayrou power," little is being said about "Allah power." If they can form a united bloc the Muslims can play a crucial, and perhaps decisive, role in the French election. They are in a position to extract commitments from either party.

Comments

[Detlef]

Well...
What exactly does he mean with "...extract commitments"?
A more conservative stance on sex education, abortion, gay rights, divorce? Or acceptance of Sharia law for French Muslims? Some softening of French "laicite"? Or what?

As a German I have to say that Dinesh D'Souza probably doesn´t understand four things about Europe.
1) The number of "one-topic voters" (like Christian fundamentalists in the USA ?) isn´t that high in most European countries.
2) In most European countries the percentage of "core voters" (Is that the right term? Voters reliably voting only for one party?) has been going down in the last 1-2 decades.
3) Most Europeans aren´t that supportive of Dinesh D'Souza´s conservative values anyway. :)
4) Because of the proportional voting system in most European countries for parliamentary elections, we tend to have more than just two significant political parties. And these parties "overlap" somewhat on political issues. Which means that a moderate "right-wing" voter can jump ship for a "centrist" party for example. A far smaller step than having a "left-wing" party as the only viable alternative. So the group of swing voters is pretty large.

So let´s assume that somehow the 10% of French Muslims form a reliable voting bloc. And say, they extract some "commitments" from a Presidential candidate.
What happens then?
Sarkozy: He´ll lose support from the Le Pen far-right voters (anti-immigration, suspicious of Muslims) which probably will abstain then. Plus he´ll lose support from the center. You know, the "fiscal conservative, free market but liberal in social issues" group. He´ll probably lose more than he wins. And did I mention that he is against Turkey in the EU?
Royal: Same for her. Only from the other side of the political spectrum.

(Not to mention the whole "laicite" thing in France. Supported by a clear majority in France. Both conservatives and socialists.)

Bottom line: Such a Muslim voting bloc could probably extract some commitments about more money for schools and education, better infrastructure and housing in predominantly Muslim suburbs. Things like that. But commitments on "conservative social values" would frighten away many (liberal in social issues) non-Muslim voters.

It might work perhaps in the minority of National Assembly seats where Muslim voters are a majority or a very strong minority.

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