Arab Americans support Sen. John F. Kerry by a two-to-one margin over President George W. Bush, according to a Zogby International poll released one week before Tuesday’s general elections.

The poll, conducted Oct. 19 to 21 among 500 Arab American registered voters in the battleground states of Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, showed Kerry rose to his highest lead among the constituency, with 54 percent support. Bush lost much of the gains he recorded with the Arab-American community after the Republican convention and lagged 26 percent behind his opponent.

“Kerry has certainly, through the debates, better introduced himself than he did at the convention,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. “But by far the more significant factor remains anger and alienation from the president and his policies.”

The Arab Muslim American Federation, an umbrella organization of several Arab- American groups, has been very politically active in encouraging the community to vote for Kerry. In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where there is a significant concentration of Arab Americans, the general sentiment of the community appears to be “anybody but Bush.”

“The drive is voting non-Bush,” said Linda Sarsour, 24, program coordinator for the Arab American Association in New York. “I’m not saying Kerry is much better, but since Bush has been in power he has been horrendous to the community.”

The president has suffered a substantial 11 percent decline among Arab-American Republicans, as Kerry gained 14 percent of their support and firmly held his base. However, 14.5 percent of Arab Americans still remained undecided and 3.5 percent supported independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

“While there is significant support for Senator Kerry and stable but diminished support for the president, there is a significant body that feels that there isn’t the choice they want and are staying home,” said Zogby.

In Bay Ridge , however, there has been a sustained effort to motivate the Arab-American community to vote. Storefront windows have been plastered with posters that read, “Yalla (come on) vote.” The Arab American Association in recent months registered 400 Arab Americans to vote in Bay Ridge alone.

“My mom went today to vote for the first time, and she grabbed her girlfriends,” said Sheren Attal, 22, a caseworker at the Arab American Association.

Despite the fact Arab Americans vote in somewhat larger numbers than the overall population, they did not experience the same level of candidate outreach they enjoyed in 2000, when Bush aggressively pursued their vote. They feel neglected, according to Laila Al-Qatami, the communications director at the Washington D.C.-based Arab American Anti Discrimination Committee.

“They are between a rock and a hard place,” said Sarsour.

Fearful that its Jewish-American support was at risk, the Kerry campaign made a tactical decision to softly court Arab Americans, and according to Zogby mistakenly adopted a “zero-sum game.”

“There is a way to speak to both Arab Americans and American Jews,” said Zogby. “In a vain attempt to save votes they weren’t going to lose they have lost votes that they may have won.”

During the vice presidential debates, Sen. John Edwards adopted a hard-line approach towards the Middle East conflict that angered Arab Americans. However, this did not seem to affect Kerry’s comfortable lead over Bush, though had Edwards shown some compassion for the Palestinians, they could have won the vast majority of Arab-American votes according to Zogby.

“The community realizes there isn’t a big difference between the candidates vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Al-Qatami. “Civil rights and U.S. foreign policy towards Iraq and Afghanistan are really the determining factors in how the community will vote.”

The support Bush received from the Arab-American community in 2000, when he led Democratic candidate Al Gore by a margin of 45.4 percent to 38 percent, has disappeared. Arab Americans have felt targeted under the president’s domestic security policies and alienated by his foreign policies.

“I don’t think it was a complete surprise,” said George Selim, an Arab-American Republican delegate from Virginia. “They had to accept some decline; I just don’t think they had a gauge of how much.”

The Bush campaign did not heavily pursue Arab Americans, choosing instead to go after specific sub-groups within the community and experienced mixed results at best.

“They tried targeted groups, such as Chaldean Christians and Iraqi Shia, and even that didn’t succeed, they barely held their base and didn’t do much better,” said Zogby. “I think that they to some degree wrote off the community.”

In the four states where the poll was conducted, Kerry was leading substantially. Even in Florida where Kerry was once tied with Bush, he now has a 47 percent to 33.5 percent lead. The Arab-American vote accounts for more than 5 percent of the overall vote in Michigan, 2 percent in Florida, just under 2 percent in Ohio and more than 1.5 percent in Pennsylvania.

While the poll concludes that 60 percent of Arab Americans will vote for Kerry on Tuesday with only 33 percent backing Bush, nationwide polls show the American public still evenly split between the two candidates.

“I am worried about the legitimacy of the process more than I am about a simple victor,” said Zogby. “It’s so close that frankly we are in a situation just as we didn’t know and may never know who won 2000, we won’t know the outcome of this election.”