Hispanic voters may or may not play a very big role in the 2016 election, but it’s pretty clear that they will certainly be playing a very big role in presidential elections and national politics in general quite soon.
Right now, the two party-leading candidates almost couldn’t be farther apart in favorability from Hispanic voters: for the Republicans, 14% of Hispanics view Trump favorably, while 65% view him unfavorably (-51% net). For the Democrats, 58% of Hispanics view Hillary Clinton favorably, while 18% view her unfavorably (40% net).
The other candidates are much less well known among Hispanic voters, but range from low positive territory (Jeb, Sanders, Rubio, among others) to small negative territory (Cruz, O’Malley, Christie, Perry, among others).
Jeb and Christie have both carried a majority of Hispanic voters in their respective states. Nationwide, Hispanics favor the Democrats, but not by the huge margins that they used to. Hispanics are also less likely to vote than other races, on average.
Democrats hoping to ride to electoral dominance on a wave of Hispanic votes might want to not count their chickens just yet.
Indeed, Hispanics are one big reason why Jeb does better than other Republicans in the match up polls. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your political leaning) the extremists are driving the Republican car right now and it is very unlikely that Hispanics will not become very active in favor of the Democrats if Trump is the nominee.
The situation would be very different indeed if a less loopy guy was ahead in the Republican polls, but the longer this affair with Trump goes the less likely is that the Republicans can rebuild the bridges that they had before between them and the Hispanics. It may be too late even if a moderate like Jeb manages to get ahead in the polls and the votes among the Republicans.
In that train wreck of a press conference Ramos pointed out to Trump that the latest poll from Gallup showed a monumental fall of support when Hispanics are asked about Trump.
‘When it comes to record numbers of disapproval, go for Trump!’
Things have happened since then. We read that President Obama wanted immigration reform; this was denied by the Republicans in Congress. Why make things better when the Brown Threat can be used on their xenophobic, racist base.
Cruz seems to have realized that he can do nothing to win the Hispanic vote. (*Tejanos *are not Cuban/Canadians.) He’s now All Jesus, All The Time. (He’s also keeping his wealthy donors happy–but that’s not for the peasants to hear.)\
Incidentally, your post shows that media analysis of the Hispanic vote is often superficial because it treats all Hispanics as if they are all descended from one national or ethnic group with no political differences between them. Until recently, Cuban-Americans were usually conservative Republicans, Puerto Ricans and Dominican-Americans were liberal Democrats, and Mexican-Americans could go either way. The shift toward the Democrats by Mexican-Americans in the last decade is almost entirely due to the GOP’s increasing anti-immigrant rhetoric.
I’ve read that the younger generation of Cubans are much less conservative than their elders - plus, except in Florida, they are not all that big a bloc.
California is an excellent example of what might happen. Republicans came out anti-immigration a while ago - and lost the Hispanics and lost the state.
I would suspect a fair number of Hispanic voters are citizens thanks to being born here - they are not going to be too happy about someone who would have taken their citizenship.
As long as Trump has access to the national media, Hispanic voters will avoid the GOP in droves. Once he is out of the race, one of the others will continue the anti-immigrant blather and continue driving Hispanics away. By the time it gets down to just JEB!, if that is how it actually turns out, it will likely be far too late to win them back.
Will the Democrats successfully convince these voters they are best represented by Hillary or whoever? That remains to be seen, but it’s where I would put my money.
And even once he is out, the media will continue to cover every horrible, wacked-out thing Trump says. They are way way way too in love with him to be able to go cold turkey.
On the whole no, but we do think that there should be a path to legalize a lot of the ones that are currently here and make exceptions like in the case of the dreamers and the ones fleeing civil unrest or gangland violence.
As I pointed in another thread, even my family has very conservative members and a crazy one in Florida. (I mean, he had issues and it is hard not to see it in his Facebook feed where he falls on election time for very racist talking points, the crazy comes by not noticing that the ones that push for that would eventually get rid of him and his family that is currently a legal one) But even them realized that in issues like the dreamers the Republicans did not do much to prevent the extremists in their party from voting against them, or worse, financing or organizing things like the ICE lawsuit ( that was dismissed by the courts ) against the dreamers. The almost total silence from mainstream Republicans to not criticise in the open the nativists and racists told many Hispanics that the Republicans do not mind what even conservative Hispanics were thinking. That was enough for my conservative family members to realize that something was indeed wrong with the party they were supporting.
That Trump and Arpaio are joined to the hip is one of the last straws, and once again the almost total silence from the conservative media and other places to not forcibly criticize those connections and support of unsavory members is telling for the Hispanics. This is not just about illegals.
I live in South Texas, and I am Hispanic and know several Hispanics. As a group, we do not support illegal immigration. The perception among the Hispanics I know, however, is that the Republican Party is not just against illegal immigration, but against a lot of other things that help Hispanics.
This. Fair or not, the perception is that the Republican Party is the party of racists, so why would a minority want to support that party? I don’t have a cite, but my guess is that most racists probably do vote Republican. If the Republican Party hopes to increase it’s share of the Hispanic vote, the candidates need to do a better job denouncing the racist elements of the party. If anything, it seems that the Republicans are trying to showcase the racism rather than denounce it.
Nope, not at all. The hatred is for all immigrants who are not lily-white. It isn’t stated that way but the subtext is clearly there for all to see.
Yep, this is pretty accurate. And keep in mind the word perception. The GOP may, in fact, not be a party of racists. But the perception at this point in most folks minds is that they are. Until the party starts to make an actual effort to combat that things won’t change much. Having morons like Trump babbling in front of the cameras and make outrageous generalizations doesn’t help the situation at all.