AUC student poll on Presidential race

Granted, the students of the American University in Cairo are not demographically typical of Egypt as a whole. They tend to be considerably wealthier than average, speak multiple languages, and in many cases are far more well-travelled than average.

Nonetheless, they’re not all that atypical of Egypt in their range of political views, and thus the student poll conducted by today’s issue the student newspaper Caravan is of some interest. Here are the results:

31% Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh
25% Amr Moussa
9% Ahmed Shafik
7% Hamdeen Sabahi
3% Khaled Ali
1% Mohamed Morsi

To summarize:

*Aboul Foutouh quit the Muslim Brotherhood late last year to get around their promise (at the time) not to run any candidates for President. He is popular with the Muslim Brotherhood youth wing and many educated or upper-class Muslims. The image he projects is one of a tolerant reformer. Yet he has close to zero Christian support, and has also been endorsed by both the Salafis (whose own candidate was disqualified due to his mother holding a U.S. passport), and the highly objectionable Gamma Islamiyya, which has associated with terrorism in the 1990’s and was illegal under Mubarak. Quite a number of my Muslim colleagues support him, and as you can see above, he is the favorite of the AUC students at present.

*Amr Moussa was initially Foreign Minister under Mubarak, in which position he became popular for several reasons, including an at least ostensible tough line on Israel. He was then shifted to the Arab League in my first or second year in Egypt, and I was among those who believed the conspiracy theory (even then) that he was being moved to the Arab League to eliminate a possible rival for Mubarak’s son Gamal, who is now in prison just one block from where I sit at a friend’s house this evening.

*Ahmed Shafik was in the news a lot as Mubarak’s replacement Prime Minister in the midst of last year’s Revolution; perhaps you remember Mubarak’s attempt at a Cabinet reshuffle to placate the Revolutionaries. Shafik has also headed up EgyptAir, the national airline, and I believe he was once Minister of Transportation.

*Hamdeen Sabbahi was a longtime anti-Mubarak activist at a time when it took some courage to be such a person, and when it seemed merely quixotic to many to call for the now hospitalized ex-President to step down.

*Khaled Ali, just 40 years old, is an activist who co-founded the liberal Hisham Mubarak Law Center.

*Mohamed Morsi is the new official candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, which dominates the newly elected Parliament with over 60% of the seats. Despite his massively powerful Party and the incredible election campaign of posters for Morsi across the city, he is not doing well in any of the polls I’ve seen. He has been unflatteringly nicknamed “The Spare,” due to his apparently flat personality (I’ve never heard him speak) and the fact that he was the replacement for the Brotherhood’s preferred candidate El-Shater.

Anything could happen. But my best guess is that Aboul Fotouh and Moussa will indeed be the two candidate in the runoff, and that Aboul Fotouh will probably win a close vote in that second stage.

You might think that all the liberals would flip to Moussa in the second round, but Moussa’s associations with Mubarak run deep enough that some activists actually seem to prefer Aboul Fotouh, despite the extensive Brotherhood credentials on his resumé.

Neither of those frontrunners is among my favorites, but neither is anywhere near the worst among the original field. My nightmare election would have pitted the Salafist candidate against Omar Soliman. But that’s not the choice before the Egyptian public, since both were disqualified.

My best guess is that I could probably live with either of those top two, though I’m uncomfortable with some of the elements who have endorsed Aboul Fotouh. I’m actually not even sure why Gamaa Islamiyya is legal now, to be perfectly frank.