The latino community is too diverse for that to make any type of sense. The Republicans pissed them off in 2012 and caused an unprecedented 45 point Democratic win but normally the margin is much smaller. Bush came with in 12 I believe and normally(including midterms) the margin is about 65-35.
Obviously that’s not great, but a third of Latino voters think there’s something worth supporting with the Republicans. Finding a Latino Republican is not nearly as rare as finding an African-American or Jewish Republican. Which is why we’ve got two running for President and all you’ve got is someone in HUD.
Your “normally” assumes there has not been a permanent shift in Latino party affiliation. I imagine this is what many Republicans like yourself were reassuring each other about Asian-Americans 15 or 20 years ago. “They normally support Republicans, they’ll be back”. But that demographic has actually made a much more substantial shift party-wise, and there is no sign they are coming back. And this is while they have been the fastest-growing segment of the electorate, so that’s another demographic factor hurting GOP prospects.
Interesting thing. The American Hispanic community is diverse. About 65% of it of Mexican heritage and next biggest Puerto Rican at roughly 10%. Then Salvadoran, then Cuban at 3.6%, then multiple other groups under 3% each (Dominican, Guatemalan, Columbian, etc.). Yet both of those running for President is of Cuban heritage. Finding a Hispanic GOP voter who is not of Cuban origin is actually just about as hard as finding a Jewish Republican voter in 2012*. The cultural heritage and political perspectives of the Cuban American community has only a little overlap with the rest of the American Hispanic community.
G W Bush did the best with Hispanic voters. His performance of 44% in 2004 was the anomaly (it was 35% in 2000) and Obama was the vote coming back. Before Bush’s 44% margin re-election, the last eight elections, inclusive of GW Bush’s first election, the GOP presidential averaged under a 28% share, just about the 27% that Romney got.
*Although I suspect that the current movement in the GOP will be pushing the Jewish GOP vote count back down. My impression is that in general Jewish Republicans do not particularly like either Trump or Cruz.
What are the Republicans doing to help return to what you call “normal”? If anything, they’ve gone out of their way to antagonize Latinos of all origins even more than in 2012.
Two Cuban-Americans, I’m afraid you are not aware of how many Hispanics dislike the sweet deal Cubans get when immigrating to the USA (like an automatic green card) it is no wonder that those Republican candidates are all (with Rubio now disowning his support for immigration reform) tone deaf about the plight of many undocumented Latinos.
Right. Calling Cruz and Rubio “hispanic” is just saying they have names of Spanish origin. If you think that gives them some kind of de facto cache with U.S. Latinos you’re mistaken. Being white and Cuban means that their families’ immigration experience was of the cushy sort. Latinos know this, but maybe the Republicans party establishment as a whole doesn’t. Certainly the media don’t. Together they’ve given that empty suit called Marco Rubio much more credit than he deserves, and this misguided assumption is a large part of it.
Who ever said that? We’re taking about a whole lot of different things. Latinos aren’t all Spanish-speakers or voters. In the end, three out of four of the states with populations who matter in this discussion are already spoken for. Texas is the only state that could change, and it’s probably too soon for that. Intelligence isn’t the issue here (though it is for those who are buying the snake oil that Trump, Cruz and Carson are selling).
Overall likely Hispanic voters have not been all that crazy about Rubio. Of those who had an opinion about him in back in April he was running a net negative 5 favorability. Even in Florida he was net negative 3 with likely Hispanic voters! And that was before the primary season with its bashing began.
Cruz lost the Hispanic vote in his home state by a 20 point margin.
They are smart enough to go by more than a last name. The GOP does not think they are maybe, and the media maybe not either, but they clearly are.
I highly doubt that it’s only four states that matter. Hispanics matter in any state where the Hispanic population is higher than the difference between the parties.
Your mistake might be in looking only at states that could change. But if nothing changes, then the Democrats win again, just like we did last time. And that means that other states are relevant, too. For instance, for the Republican to win in 2016 probably requires that he flip Ohio (there are other routes, but they’re less likely). In 2012, Obama won Ohio by three percentage points, and the state is 3.5% Hispanic. The Republicans could theoretically flip Ohio just by winning most of the Hispanic vote, though of course that’s not going to happen. And if their percentage among Hispanics slides further, that’ll mean they have to make up that much more in other demographics.
As we’ve covered before (and backed up with more than one on-line simulator like this one from 538) reasonable progress in Hispanic share won’t help the GOP at a presidential level very much by itself. They still need to also do better in other demographics as well. Losing the huge advantage they have in the not college educated White vote, or even not getting increased turn out there, would be a hard price for them to pay, yet demonizing some “other” seems to be required to do that … it is a real conundrum.
Play some.
Give them a 50% share of the Hispanic vote and keep everything else the same. The GOP loses EV 255 to Dem 283 even though they win the popular vote by a narrow margin. Now they can also win if they at the same time move up Black share to say 16%, but if so doing loses them just 1% of the non-college educated White vote? Back to a loss in the EV even with a 1.3% popular vote win.
Maybe if the turnouts drop in Black and Hispanic as well as increased GOP share without losing non-college educated White from Romney baseline? Yeah that can do it.
By the way moving Hispanic share only the flips go in order FL, NM, CO and NV pretty much as a unit, NV, and then after quite a bit more PA, then CA, VA, and then OH.
The Trump and Cruz double down on non-college educated Whites is also improbable but if nothing else was to change as a result of the attempt to go for that group with full pandering engaged, it would take only a modest increase in turn out and share. And a slight increase in Black share with a slight drop in Black turn out would easily offset a slight increase in Hispanic turnout and further loss of share.
Unfortunately it probably is true that demonizing Hispanics and Muslims enough to excite the non-college educated White voter bloc while trying to make some minimal inroads with Black voters (just enough to depress turnout some and get share up to even 11 or 12%) is their least poor option electorally.
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that Ohio was near the top of the list, just that the list was a lot longer than California, Texas, and whatever other states guizot was considering to matter. Ohio was mostly just the first one I thought to check because I live here.
Actually, I was thinking of a flip in the other direction of any state, solely due to a net increase in the so-called “Hispanic” population, which would by itself doom a Republican presidency in 2016–and which in my haste I didn’t make clear at all, I can see looking back.