Barry Rubin: Egypt: We’ve Heard What the Majority Thinks

Egypt: We’ve Heard What the Majority Thinks

BIALYSTOCK: “Maybe it’s not true!”
BLOOM: (mumbling): “No way out. No way out.”
BIALYSTOCK: “Why don’t we go over to the theatre and see what’s really happening? After all, we’ve only heard from a small portion of the audience. Let’s hear what the majority thinks.”
BLOOM (in a trance): “The majority. The majority. Yes. Let’s hear from the majority.”
–“The Producers” (1968)

“What should be clear to the Brotherhood…is that most Egyptians have no interest in swapping Mubarak’s secular dictatorship for a religious one.
–New York Times editorial, December 2011

By Barry Rubin

Let’s figure out what the voting in Egypt means in concrete terms. What we have so far are these results in one-third–the most liberal one-third!) of Egypt:

Muslim Brotherhood 37 percent

Al-Nour (Salafist) 25 percent

Egyptian bloc (mainly the Free Egyptian party) 14 percent

Wafd (liberal but willing to work with Brotherhood) 8 percent

Al-Wast (Moderate Muslim party) 4 percent

The remaining votes went to small parties. There is a remarkable set of graphs available analyzing the first round of the election.

Most important, 112 seats in the lower house of parliament were distributed, between 20 and 25 percent of the total, along the following lines:

Muslim Brotherhood 46

Al-Nour (Salafist) 28

Egyptian bloc 16

Wafd 8

al-Wasat 5

Other 9

Total 112

First, let’s note that these elections will include a second round for unresolved races for parliament’s lower house, voting for the upper house, and will continue until March.

Continue reading Egypt: We’ve Heard What the Majority Thinks

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

Technorati Tag: Egypt and Muslim Brotherhood and Middle East.