MINORITIES IN NON-MUSLIM STATES

USA: Ethnic Vote in Presidential Election

Both the Democratic and Republican parties’ are making an unprecedented effort during the 1996 campaign to win the ethnic vote, which could provide a crucial margin of victory.

Immigrants have come to America from all over the globe. But during most of the life of the Republic, they came preponderantly from Europe. It is their descendants who are most often referred to as ethnic voters, even though in recent years, large numbers of Asians and Hispanics from Latin America have settled in the United States.

According to the Ethnic Almanac, during the last 150years, over 80 per cent of the more than 60 million people who emigrated to the United States came from just ten countries, most of them European: Germany (14.8 million);Italy (11.1); United Kingdom (10.3); Ireland (10); Austria/Hungary (9.2); Canada (8.6); Russia (7.1); Mexico (4.1);West Indies (3); Sweden (2.7). There also are significant numbers of Albanian, Armenian, Croatian, Greek, Polish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Slovak and Ukrainian-Americans, descendants of immigrants from those countries

Traditionally, the entire vote was mostly Democratic, explained Richard Engstrom, a political science professor at the University of New Orleans in Louisiana and an expert on ethnic voting patterns.

But in the years after World War II, some ethnic voters defected to the Republic Party, especially during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Engstrom noted.

"The explanation for the defection is simple", said Edwin Derwinski, chairman of Ethnic-Americans for the GOP."the Republicans were tougher on the Soviet Union, and even after the Cold War, the party has advocated a stronger foreign policy and a stronger defense"

Derwinski said that the first major defection of ethnic voters from the Democratic Party occurred even earlier -after (Democratic) President Franklin Roosevelt’s agreement with Stalin at Yalta, which laid out the terms for the division of Europe after World War II". Many ethnic Americans felt the Democrats were not tough enough with the Communist regimes that took over in their former homelands, he explained.

"Ethnic voters, who were one of the original bedrock constituencies of the Democratic Party, are coming back; many who voted Republican didn't feel comfortable doing so", Democratic staffer Albert noted. "The Republicans may have been seen as tougher on the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, but now the Cold War has ended and the Republicans no longer have that issue with ethnic voters"

Asked if foreign policy is more important in general to ethnic voters, both Albert and Derwinski said yes, particularly among those groups that still follow events in their ancestral homelands.

Appealing to ethnic voters has a long tradition in American politics, but politicians, especially national leaders, cannot afford to tailor their policies too closely to the interests of particular ethnic groups for fear of offending other groups, or being seen as pandering, said Engstrom.

But all politicians, national and local, are required to pay homage to important ethnic traditions, whether it is showing up for the Pulaski Day Parade, or the wearing of the green on St. Patrick's Day.

Whatever the outcome of the election this year, Engstrom said, he doubts whether the ethnic vote will ever again be a bloc vote permanently in the hands of any one political party. "It was never a completely bloc vote for the Democratic Party the way, for example, the black vote has been," he said.

'In addition, increasingly it is difficult to distinguish between the concerns of ethnic Americans and Americans in general. There now is much less spatial segregation of ethnics in residential neighbourhoods, for example, and also much greater diversity of income and employment,"Engstrom said. The major political parties will have to compete aggressively for the ethnic vote in future elections as well, he concluded.