If there has been any success in any of the statements Republican bigwigs have made to assure Hispanic voters their party is on their side, it’s not evident in a new poll. In fact, the party has a deep rooted problem now with how the fastest-growing block of voters perceive it — forget just the concept of rebranding:
After Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney lost the Latino vote by more than 40% in 2012, the Republican Party has started an effort to rebrand itself to be more attractive to the growing demographic.
But that’s not going to be easy, according to the results of a new poll released Friday, and will require the Republican Party to turn back the a belief among Latinos that the party doesn’t care about them.
Half of Hispanics identify with the Democratic Party, according to the Public Religion Research Institute poll, compared to the 15% who identify with the GOP.
But the problem is more than just party identification, says the survey. Forty-three percent of Hispanics identified that the phrase “cares about people like you” more appropriately describes the Democratic Party, while 12% say the same for the GOP.Also an issue for the GOP: their favorability rating with Hispanic voters has dramatically declined since George W. Bush won re-election in 2004 with 44% of the Hispanic vote.
After Bush’s re-election, nearly half of Hispanics reported having a favorable view of the GOP. In nine years, that number has split in half, with 24% of Hispanics reporting in the most recent PRRI poll that they had a positive view of the GOP, while 65% said they have an unfavorable view of the party.
In the long-run, the GOP faces problems unless its voter ID laws manage to keep a huge, this growing block of voters from exercising their right to vote. And there are no signs that the party is seriously moving to both mend-fences with Hispanic voters or behave or speak in ways that reassures them.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.