mohamed morsi, in the delta. ahmad shafiq wins five in the delta including mohamed morsi, beat him in his home government where por si represented that government has a parliamentarian in the 2000-2005 period. and, in fact, ahmed shafiq won by pretty big margins in the delta, by more than ten percentage points in four of those five governments. more secular candidates or nonislamists also tend to do well in the red sea area and the south sinai but, again, i don't want to concentrate on those, because we're talking about less than 1% of the elect electorate. but the storyline that's emerging is that islamists are doing very well in upper egypt, nonislamists are doing well in the metropolitan areas in the north, cairo, port said, to an extent alexandria, and there's really some surprising op suggestion to the islamists, in my mind, that's emerging in the delta. now, i'm going to move on to the constitutional referendums, referenda, and the reason why i didn't want lead with this, this is the first con logically, the first vote that took after the revolution, but i think we should look at it with some degree of caution in terms of what it says about support for islamists and nonislamists in that they weren't on the ballot. it was an up or down vote on the framework for the transition period. that said, it's a decent proxy indicator because islamists strongly lined up in favor of the charter, and most nonislamists opposed the charter. so you can view it as somewhat of a proxy indicator. and what you see here is the islamist position, you know, the interwith rim charter -- interim charter there was a yes vote of 77%. that's the interim position, it's really their high water mark, and it's the first vote after the transition. and you see despite the fact there's wide support for this, for the interim charter that extends throughout the country, for example, the charter passed by no less than 61% in all of at that time there was 29 governments, now there's 27, in all of the 29 governments of egypt, you do still see these geographic divides. so it passed by the largest margins in upper egypt just as we saw in the earlier vote, and where there was pockets of opposition, they were in the same areas. cairo, alexandria and these smaller or sparsely-populateed gore rates of the south sea. now i'm going to move on to the most recent vote which was the december 2012 referendum on the constitution. and here again as when we compared the parliamentary vote with the presidential vote, the regional divides are even more stark. so what we see here is you had three governor plants in the delta and cairo that majorities rejected the constitution. it only passed by a percentage point in port said. also overall support dropped, so whereas for the interim charter that passed with 77% of the vote, here you only have 64% yes, and you have you have a significant drop in turnout, a 13% drop in turnout, only a third of the electorate turned out to vote for the, in the, for the permanent constitution. so what are the maintainingaways? -- maintainingaways? that islamists do quite well in upper egypt, in the outlying governance of the west and also in north sinai whereas nonislamists do well in cairo and its immediate environs, south sinai and those sparsely-populated governor nates on the red sea. so that speaks to the main takeaways in terms of the red state/blue state dynamic, if you will, of egypt. the delta is contested territory, and to me, surprisingly so. we see an opportunity, if you will, for nonislamists. islamists perform well in the delta in absolute terms, but they underperform their national averages. and then there's also a macro trend which is support for islamists is waning over time. we see that their high water mark was in the first referendum, the first election that occurred after the transition at which point they'd been bleeding some support. so what are the implications going forward? i'm not here to advocate that the national salvation front should participate in the election ares. that's their choice -- elections, that's their choice, and there's a complicated calculus behind that, and there could be good reasons for not participating, frankly. but my analysis argues should they decide to participate, they could pick up seats. and, again, i'm not suggesting that they would get a majority of seats. those group withs combined to get a very small percentage in the first parliamentary elections, but i think they would outperform as they did in the 2011-2012 elections and be more competitive. and i think the trend lines that i'm identifying here, i take a study approach that's very data driven as dahlia mentioned. but if you take a more qualitative approach and you look at developments, recent developments in the region, they tend to support these main trend lines. so, for example, you have a lot of opposition that's been galvanized by president morrissey's november 22nd presidential decree in which he expanded the powers of the executive at that time, in which he placed the decisions above judicial review and also appointed what has been a very divisive prosecutor general, for instance. and that's galvanized a lot of op suggestion to morsi himself and to the brotherhood writ large. you've had major protests recently in the canal cities, port said and suez, and those protests don't necessarily have to do with directly with support for islamists or support for nonislamists, but they've definitely taken on a political turn and spread more broadly throughout the country. also you've had a change in the relative cohesiveness of act to haves. so one of the advantages -- of actors. so one of the advantages of islamists in previous elections is they're a pretty cohesive bloc. you've had some splintering among the salafist group, so you've had what are sometimes called the doves of the salafist groups break away from nour and start on the homeland party, and you've had tensions even within other elements of the salafist community in between the salafists and the muslim brotherhood. and you've also had recent changes in the electoral formula which i would argue are going to play to the strengths of of nonislamists. so there was a recent decision by the supreme constitutional court which mandated that representation in parliament be proportional to the size of the electorate in that district. traditionally, upper egypt have had disproportionate representation. it was actually a strategy of the previous regime. there's lower political consciousness there, the regime felt like those areas were easier to deliver for the then-ruling party, the national democratic party. the areas that are going to get seats under the new formula are cairo, which is going to get a lot of seats, and the delta. and as this analysis has shown, cairo is, in fact, an area where nonislamists do well, and the delta is contested territory. so i think there are a lot of trend lines that play in favor of the nonislamists. >> thank you. thank you, jeff. and what i think what we'll do is we'll broaden, open up the discussion. i'm going to start with some questions for our panelists, and then we'll open it up to the room for questions from you all in a few minutes. what i'd like to do first is turn to summer and michelle to get some reactions to jeff's report and then we can broaden in terms of broader trend lines. and starting with this analysis that jeff is presenting about the balance of power and the losing influence or declining influence of the islamists, the fracturing within and so forth, um, to what extent, summer, maybe you can start, do you agree with these, this analysis of the balance of power internally and, michelle, you could speak to that as well but maybe also the question of to what extent these elections play a role, how significant are they compared to other factors in egypt's political transition? because they're not isolated. so i also want to make sure we think of the broader context here. so let's start with summer. >> sure. well, first, you know, i need to commend jeff and his co-author for the report. um, it's a very interesting report, it's a very good report, and i think what we should immediately take away is the fact that now when elections in egypt actually have some integrity and the voting patterns mean something, we can empirically study outcomes. and, of course, we couldn't do this before because the primary determinant of election outcomes in egypt under mubarak was the extent of electoral fraud. and so for those of us who studied elections, we had to kind of guess which districts the voting was, had some integrity and which districts doesn't. so i think this is one of the first studies i've seen, and hopefully there will be more empirical analysis, of voting patterns of who votes for whom and why and so on. so i think, you know, the authors need to be commended. i agree generally, i think, with some of the conclusions that are drawn from this. the fact that there is a geographical aspect of voting with regard to islamists that -- and maybe i would phrase it differently, or this is an area of exploration, that urban centers -- not just cairo, but urban centers, alexandria, which i would think for some reasons should be excluded from the category of the delta, a city of five-plus million people and so on -- that i think voted for socialist candidate in the first round of the egyptian parliamentary elections, that urban centers tend to not be so favorable or as favorable to islamists. and, of course, more rural areas tend to be more favorable to islamists. and, in fact, we can maybe even go beyond thinking about geography and thinking about what this means in terms of socioeconomic class. and i think this is very, very important. and i think what we'll find is that, and there has been some research that has been done many a very initial -- in a very initial stage to try to document this. i think by the danish/egyptian network done by the center for political and strategic studies that tries to argue, and this makes sense intuitively, that there is a relationship between wealth, education and voting and that, in fact, the more, the higher socioeconomic classes, the more education, the less likelihood one is to vote for islamists. and, in fact, we could even -- and some of the data shows this -- that less education, um, lower wealth one is more likely to vote for not justice lammists, but the salafi groups and so on. so i i think that's a very, very important -- and i think that's in line with the findings and the arguments that are made here. i also think that the other general trend without overemphasizing it is also valid, and that is that we are likely to see decreasing electoral strength for islamists generally. and there are many reasons for that. some quite simple, that is that, you know, up until 2011, up until the egyptian uprising islamist groups, in particular the muslim brother hood, are really the only serious political actors other than mubarak's ruling party that actually took elections seriously. and there was good reason for that. if you were a rational voter in egypt under mubarak, you stayed home because you knew that your vote didn't mean anything. and i think the large, significant liberal political currents also didn't participate in elections, and many of the parties that we see merging now, the constitution party and others and so on are new post-january 2005 phenomenon. so as these liberal secular parties get more established, established brand names -- which they don't have, and this is another issue -- the muslim brotherhood has a brand name. it's a recognizable commodity. people know what they're voting for when they vote for the muslim brotherhood, and that's so some extent true for the sal salafis as well. i don't think that can be said for the liberal parties. i might be-- it might be able to be said for the left party, prerevolution party, but it certainly can't be said of some of the other liberal secular pears. so as these parties open up offices, as they gain electoral experience, as they hopefully, which they haven't done, do outreach, do community work, have a presence outside the major cities and so on, do the difficult work of political organization because, of course, half of political success is organization. and the islamists have done a wonderful job of this. and the liberal secular parties and those youth that initiated the revolution have not done a very good job of this. as these groups engage in in this kind of grassroots retail politics, i would hope that their electoral fortunes would do percent. and i think i'll just -- do better. and i think i'll just end with the following initially, and that is there's another reason why islamists are likely to do less well in the coming, you know, years, and that is because up until the present islamists have not been tested. but mr. morsi now has been tested at least since august of 2012, and the situation is not good. and there has been significant economic deterioration. there's rising unemployment, a million people more unemployed. there's, um, a liquidity crisis. there is the withdrawal of foreign direct investment, there is the downgrading of the egyptian economy by the international rating agencies. there is the depreciation of the egyptian pound, and there's serious or security issue in the country. so voters in egypt like elsewhere are, respond to conditions. and right now the conditions are or the trend line is not positive. and i think that will likely have some impact on future elections. not decisive or determinant in the sense that liberals and secular groups are going to win elections, you know, 50% plus one, but i think they're likely to do better. and just the last point that i'll make, and i don't know if -- i don't think this comes up in the report, and that is something to think about. i think at one level it's but, but, you know, the empirics about this need to be investigated a little more thoroughly, to what extent is electoral composition in egypt for islamists competition between islamists as as opposed to between islamists and liberal secular forces? in other words, if you speak to members of the muslim brotherhood, the freedom and justice party as i did last week and in the previous elections and so on, i i think their fears when they look at upcoming elections aren't so much from the left party, it's from the right. it's from the salafi parties, from the nour party and so on. and so what we're likely to see is also a rebalancing possibly of that relationship. in the first elections, the parliamentary elections as jeff mentioned, the pus limb brotherhood and their -- muslim brotherhood and their electoral partners received about 43, 45% of the vote whereas the salafi bloc received 25 percent of the vote. it could very well be in the upcoming elections that the salafi parties maybe do a little bit for percent and the muslim brotherhood does less. so i think i'll hand things over to michelle. >> michelle, do you have an agreement on this, and maybe you could speak to the strength of the nonislamist parties and the extent to which they're getting their act together or not. so -- >> okay, thank you. thank you, dalia, thank you, jeff, and i agree that i thought the report was excellent, very useful, and the findings certainly ring true in the main. but since i've been asked to comment, i'm going to problemtize a little bit. and i would say that i thought the findings were great in the sense that they countered the conventional wisdom, you know, that there's a green wave, the brotherhood is it, you know, they've taken over egypt, no going on from this. and i don't think that's necessarily the case. i agree with jeff that that isn't he'sly the case, and we need to look in more detail. but i also think, i mean, and i understand that with the report you were trying to tell a clear story. but, you know, when we get beyond that, i think and look at things in a little more detail, there are a lot of other questions that arise. now, you know, one of them, samer just raised one of them which i think is a very big one which is that this is a very pluralist scene in egypt, and it's pluralist on all parts of the political spectrum including the islamist part. so to just say islamist versus secularist really doesn't tell you the whole story, and the nour party and the salafis are a very important part of the story. and, in fact, you know, if we could put up here sort of a schematic of the main political parties, right? already the political scene in this egypt has sorted itself out to some extent as so often happens after a revolution, right? you have dozens of parties in the first election and fewer in the next and over several terms. so but now, i mean, we still have at least, um, at least a dozen political parties if not more that are relevant right now. but it's not justice lammist versus secularists. you could also look at them as being right, center, liberal and left. and you have islamists right, central, liberal and left and secularists right, central, liberal and left which tells you, you know, something about the, yes, secular versus islamist, but also the political agenda, the agenda in terms of human rights and the economic agenda. so, um, you know, it's finish the political spectrum is a lot more complicated, i think, than justice lammist versus secularists, and it would be great, you know, in future work if you do more work based on this to look at that sort of thing. i also think very much, you know, i want to emphasize a point that samer raised about the important role of mobilization. because you, now, it's very good that you based your findings on electoral results, not on public opinion. but one could be misled in reading this report and thinking it's all about how people feel, how people feel about the brotherhood versus, you know, secular parties or something. and as we know, you know, in an electoral democracy it's really much more about what people do and especially about who shows up on election day. and that's one caution i want to raise about what the electoral results will be next time. now, you, of course, raised the important issue of whether the parties that have gathered within the national salvation front will participate. that's huge. but let's even say, let's even say they do participate or whatever, mobilization is enormous. so the question is, if sentiment is trending against the brotherhood -- and i agree it is, i mean, there are protests against the brotherhood at the brother hood headquarters in cairo today, and they've been happening, what's more impressive is that they've been happening in a lot of other parts of the country, not just in cairo where we already know sentiment is not particularly pro-brotherhood -- but, so i agree with this, and i think i'd be very interested, jeff, and i'm sure you've looked at the recent student elections, professional send candidate elections. there is a trend of the brotherhood losing, losing its share. not losing entirely, but losing its share in these elections. and it's interesting to think what this means for parliamentary elections. but my question about parliamentary elections is if people are feeling down on the brotherhood, does that mean they're going to turn up and vote for somebody else, or does that mean they're just not going to turn up? and, you know, and is it still going to be, you know, the brotherhood and perhaps the salafis with their mobilizational mechanic nhls that can get -- mechanisms that can get people to turn out and vote for them? so i think that's, that's something that we're going to need to, um, to look at. and a couple of other -- one other question that arose, you raised this question of the delta, and i'm actually hoping samier can say a -- samer can say a word about this. i'm curious about the role of labor. that can be an important factor in the delta and whether that's one of the reasons, yeah, there are some very strong, obviously, labor cities in the delta and the canal area and so forth and also one of the reasons why, um, in the first round of the presidential elections sabahi did well. i actually wish but it would have had to have been a more detailed paper, you were able to get into analyzing the first round of the presidential election. i think it was extremely interesting, although admittedly there were some political factions, notably liberals, who were not represented in the first round of the presidential election. but when we get into what i was talking about, you've got, you know, right islamist, left islamist, right secularists, left secularists, i think if you looked at the first rounds of the presidential election, you could begin to see how the electorate divides up in that more differentiated way. the last issue i'll raise is just you mentioned the electoral districts and this court ruling that the electoral districts have to be more representative in terms of population. there are a lot of accusations now of gerrymandering, that there has been, you know, an effort while morsi has been in power to break up some of the districts that secularists -- i wonder what you think about that. there's also a big issue with the voter lists. these are all things that are, you know, very complicated, technical issues, but we know they can have a profound impact on how parliamentary elections will come out when they eventually take place. i have some things i would like to say about what this means for the united states and u.s. policy toward egypt, but perhaps shall i save those, dalia? >> yes, we'll get to those. >> okay, great. >> these were great comments and very helpful as we move forward with this line of research. you know, there seems to be agreement that sentiment, voting patterns as jeff's report shows is trending against the muslim brotherhood. i think the disagreement is what are the implications of that and where will things move going forward. so i wouldn't mind getting, especially samer and jeff's view on what is your view of where things are going in terms of the election boycott and whether that's likely to happen, or how is the national salvation front, the nonislamist groups looking at these trends? are they thinking this is an opportunity? right now they're considering the boycott, is that a mistake? where do you think, what are possible scenarios of how this might play out, and then to michelle just so then we have time to open up for questions, i would like your assessment especially since you've spent time in government of to what extent do you think the u.s. could influence these outcomes? should we be trying to take advantage of these vulnerabilities we're seeing on a regional basis? would that backfire? to what extent should we try to play in this electoral game, and more prod ri, you know -- broadly, you know, we're on the hill today and many folks here are thinking about different steps the u.s. can take in terms of reorienting u.s. relationships we egypt, so i think it's very important to open the discussion in that way as well. so let's start on what are future scenarios that might be possible. we'll start with jeff and then head back to samer. >> in terms of the election boycott that was announced by the national salvation front, it's hard to tell whether they're going to participate in future elections when these elections eventually do occur. the national salvation front has a series of demands. they're pretty far reaching. one of them is for a national unity government, so the current prime minister, he'd have to go probably. the prosecutor general, abdullah, he's very -- he's not personally that divisive of a figure. the problem is the way in which he was appointed which most egyptians would say is not the appropriate procedure for appointing the prosecutor general. so there's a, the national salvation front has a big list of demands that they would like to see the brotherhood cede to. the brotherhood has actually shown, has tried to show that they're flexible on some of them. there's been a lot of press reporting that they're willing to, for example, shuffle the cabinet. they have not yet. but, again, going forward it's very tough to tell. what's also tough to tell is how cohesive the national salvation front is. i mean, i've been surprised, and they've exceeded my expectations of their ability to be able to hold together. there was a sort of main critique of the nonislamist forces, it's that they're fractious, they don't get along together, the parties are personalistic, there's a lot of in-fighting. they were unified in this boycott. they have some really smart people. in fact, their boycott campaign is being organized by a man who used to work at cash my and is a smart guy and knows what he's doing, is politically astute. but i could see some fracturing. there's certainly some rank and file within some of the parties that would like to contest the waft, the historic nationalist party is always going to be a problem in this. they're probably going to, they're a group that you can see break for political expediency reasons if they see an opportunity to pick pup seats. they've done that in the past. again, hard to tell how it'll shake out. it's also you don't know if these demands that the national salvation front have made are genuine or if they'll move the goalpost. they have moved the goalpost several times. so even if the brotherhooding willing to back down, will the nsf just push them, you know, hard to see that it's to their political advantage not to participate. and i'll just close by saying although my analysis argues that should the national salvation front participate they would pick up seats, i'm not necessarily advocating they take that approach. there's good reasons -- they have one source of leverage. they can or cannot legitimize the election. they have one very big bullet in their chamber. how they, you know, decide to use that is up to mohamed el elr to figure out, but there are also good reasons for them to maybe with participation if they think they can get more out of it, for example, revisiting the constitution. >> okay. samer, would you agree? you mentioned earlier how the islamists face threats from their right as much as the left, so is this strategically a mistake by the nonislamist national salvation fund to consider this boycott given what may fill the vacuum? >> right. well, it's not a mistake certainly to consider the boycott, but it has to be said that boycotts are incredibly difficult to sustain and for them to be successful. boycotts are, essentially, a collective action problem in reverse. and what this means is that then there are increased incentives as jeff mentioned for defectors because be you defect and -- if you defect and others are not participating, there's a higher likelihood you're going to succeed and then be represented in greater numbers in any kind of parliament. and jeff is also very correct
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