Hispanic Vote Swinging Our Way

by Matt Stoller, Fri Jan 13, 2006 at 04:54:50 AM EST

Alito live-blogging is taking place at SCOTUS-blog.

I'm going to have a lot more soon on minority voters and minority candidates, but this is very good news. Hispanics are swinging back to the 'D' column.

Let's start with the generic Congressional contest. This poll finds Democrats with a stunning 61-21 lead over the GOP among Hispanic registered voters, which translates into a 50 point lead (75-25) among those who express a preference. The analogous figure among those who expressed a preference in the June DCorps poll was "only" 36 points. By way of comparison to the last two off-year elections, 2002 and 1998, Democrats carried the Congressional vote by 24 and 26 points, respectively.
The new poll also finds Democrats with a 35 point lead (58-23) in party identification among voters. Also among voters, Democrats have huge leads over Republicans as the party better able to handle a wide variety of issues: being in touch with the Hispanic community (+41); providing affordable health care (+40); improving the economy (+31 points); improving education (+30); and representing your views on immigration (+29). The one exception to this pattern is on "keeping America safe and fighting terrorism", where the parties are dead-even (and even here, the report notes, this tie is a sharp decline from Bush's 14 point lead over Kerry on this issue before the 2004 election).

The biggest problem of course is that Hispanics aren't registered to vote in the same numbers as the rest of the population. That's a long term organizing problem to add to the list.

Tags: Demographics (all tags)

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The GOP Is Fueling This Everywhere You Look

The GOP has done everything imagineable to earn the rejection of Hispanic voters. And they're just getting started as they rev up anti-immigrant activism in their attempts to hold the Congress this year.

Here in California, for example, Schwarzennegar gained enormous support from Hispanics in the special election that brought him to power. But his rightwing rampage last year, coming on top of massive tuition hikes at community colleges before that, has turned them off "big time," as America's penultimate war criminal would say.

And a recent scorecard on race-related issues found that Schwarzennegar--with a very generous "D" grade--ranked at the top of the GOP heap, along with a handful of GOP minority lawmakers. The worst of the Dems were better than the best of the GOP.

by Paul Rosenberg 2006-01-13 05:31AM | 0 recs

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I Just Posted A Diary On This

I just posted a diary with an alternative version of an article I wrote on this scorecard last month.

"GOP Racism Visible In Results--CA Scorecard Shows" even has two nifty, dramatic charts showing the vast gulf between the parties in both houses of the California legislature.

by Paul Rosenberg 2006-01-13 07:59AM | 0 recs

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hope so

This seems so logical that minorities would support the Dems but I am reluctant to believe the polls anymore.

by aiko 2006-01-13 05:59AM | 0 recs

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One word:

Absentee Ballots

Bushee snark

by Robert P 2006-01-13 06:01AM | 0 recs

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Solid poll

A lot of times you see statistics on minorities as sub-groups of larger polls, and thus with very high margins of error (an example would be the poll several months ago that showed like a 2% approval rating for Bush among African Americans, but was a subgroup - only 80-odd Blacks were polled).

This poll is of 1000 Hispanic adults, so these numbers are quite good.

by fwiffo 2006-01-13 07:15AM | 0 recs

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Re: Solid poll

Great point

by Matt Stoller 2006-01-13 07:41AM | 0 recs

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How does this impact 2006?

Are their districts with significant Hispanic registration represented by Republicans that might be in play now?

by Quaoar 2006-01-13 07:31AM | 0 recs

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The genius didn't see this one coming.

Karl Rove's nickname is "boy genius".

It is well deserved.

He's managed to successfully polish the turd that is George W. Bush for two elections, despite Bush's record. In that time the GOP has increased its majority in Congress.

But there was one thing the "boy genius" didn't count on - his base is full of racist morons.

Rove knows better. He wants the Hispanic vote, badly. He knows what happened to Pete Wilson. Prop 187 passed overwhelmingly, then changing demographics ensured the destruction of the California GOP. He doesn't want this to happen to the national party.

But the base doesn't understand this. Some are naive enough to believe that a fence will stop illegal immigration. (Janet Napolitano's comment about the 51 foot ladder was an appropriate response.) Most don't understand that they come here for economic reasons, just like the ancestors of nearly all Americans did. Many just don't like funny talking brown people.

So despite Rove trying to do every thing to stop it, a "grassroots movement" will decide draconian immigration laws.

However, people will still come to the US, legally and illegally.

These people will have kids - on average more kids than Anglo families. These kids will be citizens by birth.

These kids will vote - and they will NOT vote Republican.

And the smartest political consultant in recent memory will be done in by the stupid people he got to vote for his candidate.

by wayward 2006-01-13 03:33PM | 0 recs