During the primaries a strong argument used against Democratic Senator Barack Obama was that he received tepid support from Hispanic voters and therefore could not be counted on to get that crucial part of the party’s constituency come November. But that argument is no more: a new Gallup Poll shows Hispanic voters strongly support the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee.
What to watch: will this poll now lead many conservatives who are unhappy about Republican presumptive nominee Sen. John McCain’s assurances to Latinos on immigration reform now pressure McCain more than ever to stop trying to appeal to Hispanics at the risk of losing conservative voters? The poll:
Hispanic registered voters’ support for Barack Obama for president remained consistent and strong in June, with Obama leading John McCain by 59% to 29% among this group.
That’s a whopping margin and it’s hard to see what McCain can do to turn that around, although he can perhaps try to neutralize Democratic Hispanic support in some key swing states.
While Hispanics generally preferred Hillary Clinton to Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, a solid majority of Hispanics have consistently backed Obama against McCain in general-election trial heats. Obama has led McCain by about a 2-to-1 margin since Gallup began tracking general-election voting preferences in early March.
And then there’s this:
Gallup has interviewed more than 4,000 Hispanic registered voters during this time period. An analysis of candidate support by subgroup within the U.S. Hispanic electorate reveals that many of the well-established divisions in this year’s campaign — such as the gender gap and the marriage gap — are weak or nonexistent among Hispanic voters.
Rather, Hispanics of differing demographic backgrounds all tend to solidly support Obama. It thus appears that there isn’t much beyond a shared Hispanic ethnicity or identity that explains Hispanic voting patterns.
The irony here is that President George Bush and his political maven Karl Rove originally made making solid inroads into the Hispanic vote a key peg of their early strategy to try and consolidate a new Republican majority. But they ran into the political buzzsaw of immigration reform, which pitted Bush’s more comprehensive version of immigration (then solidly advocated by McCain) against many in the party’s conservative base against any kind of immigration reform that smacks of an amnesty. When Rove formally left his White House job last summer he warned the GOP not to alienate Hispanics.
The Gallup explanation doesn’t point to this as a factor but it most likely is. And the bottom line is: the GOP now seems to be back to square one when it comes to Hispanic voters. Or, perhaps more accurately, behind the 8 ball…
ALSO OF INTEREST:
Hispanics and the 2008 Election
Has The GOP Lost Hispanic Voters?
Republicans Lose Ground Among Hispanic Voters
What Latinos Want From Their President (by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales)
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.