Al-Arabiya has posted an article titled “Crunching Mursi’s declining numbers” which analyzes the recent Egyptian presidential election’s results. The article begins:
Those congratulating the Muslim Brotherhood for Mohammed Mursi’s victory in the Egyptian presidential elections have failed to take note: the organization has sustained substantial losses, and a comparison of voting trends in the parliamentary and presidential elections reveals a sharp decline in the Brotherhood’s popularity in the five months between.While the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party received 10.5 million votes (33 percent of the total) in the legislative elections, Mursi received almost half of that in the first round of the presidential election: 5.7 million votes (or roughly 25 percent of the votes), beating the runner-up Ahmed Shafiq by a mere 259,000 votes. As for the runoff round, Mursi squeaked by in a narrow victory – with only 882,000 votes over his rival, despite the fact that many of the Brotherhood’s competitors during the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential election endorsed him in the runoff out of fear that a Shafiq victory would spell the end of the revolution. Also, there were almost 843,000 nullified votes – nearly equal to the difference between the two presidential contenders. This overview at the national level raises a number of questions about the ‘disappearance’ of almost half of the Brotherhood’s voting bloc. More significantly, however, examination of the voting figures in each province reveals a significant drop even in traditional Brotherhood strongholds. Mursi came in second or third place in a number of provinces in the Delta known as Islamist-friendly – areas which the organization had swept in the parliamentary elections: Sharqiya, Gharbiya, Dakahliya, Qaliobiya, Menoufiya, Alexandria, and Ismailiya. In Alexandria, Mursi came in third place in the first round – barely getting half as many votes as the leftist Hamdeen Sabahi (571,700 versus 299,400), even though the FJP won 10 of the province’s 24 seats in parliament amid fierce competition from the Salafists. Mursi also came in second place in his own home province of Sharqiya, garnering only 32 percent of the vote, while the Brotherhood previously won 18 of the 30 available seats in parliament. In Beheira, the home of the Brotherhood’s founder Hasan al-Banna, the Brotherhood won a respectable 12 out of 30 seats; Mursi won only 29 percent of the vote. In Gharbiya, where the organization landed 13 out of 30 seats, the new president’s support plunged to 17 percent in the first round. Shafiq continued to make headway on the Brotherhood’s home turf in the runoffs. In Gharbiya, for example, he took 63 percent of the vote for Mursi’s 37 percent. In the eastern Delta province of Sharqiya, Mursi was also upset by 54 percent to 46 percent, and in Qaliobiya, Mursi took only 42 percent versus a 58 percent for Shafiq – and again, after the FJP dominated parliamentary election performance in the area, taking 10 of 17 seats.
Read the rest here.