Romney got a measly 27% in 2012, McCain got 31%. Historically, the highest was GWB’s re-election in 2004 with 44%, but all indicators is that Latino votes are trending downward for the GOP while their importance is trending up. Some predict that the GOP would need more than 40% of their votes to win.
With so much focus this election season on “Mexican rapists” and “illegals”, I don’t see the GOP getting much more than Romney. If the nominee’s Trump, I doubt it’ll break 20%. The highest would be Rubio, followed by maybe Cruz. Bush is a possibility too, as his brother got a pretty high percentage and he has been vocally more supportive of minorities than his fellow GOP candidates.
Plus, the next Dem nominee will be white. I’m sure there are a non-zero number of Dem voters who were turned off by a black candidate, those could now return to the Democratic fold. There probably isn’t a lot, but its no longer a factor against them.
I’m gonna go with 22%, Alex. If anything, the anti-Latino sentiment in the GOP has kicked into overdrive over the past few years. You don’t vote for people who hate your guts and are out to make your life miserable.
It is kind of like Michael Steele or Sarah Palin, just putting a black guy or a woman up as a spokesperson means nothing if the policies are still hostile to an entire group of people. I don’t think Palin helped the GOP win many/any female votes.
Cruz and Rubio are Cubans. Cuban Americans generally support and are a near reliable bloc for the Republican party. A majority of Latinos from countries other than Cuba support and are generally a near reliable bloc for the Democratic party.
I wouldn’t expect non-Cuban Latino support or votes for the Republican party to increase because a Cuban is the nominee. Actually, I expect it to have the opposite effect considering commentary from my wife, her family, and her friends, all of whom are naturalized American citizens from central and south American countries.
I think the GOP needs to realize that non-Cuban Latinos believe the Republican party hates them with an irrational and unquenchable passion. Actually, I think the party does realize and simply doesn’t care.
24%-29%. I think Rubio and Cruz could do significantly well with Latinos, but the GOP’s policies may have to change. We will see what happens in 2016, but right now it does not look well. Latinos also may have to look for a strong defense and a powerful military might as their second options of concern. The Democratic Party of the 21st century better keep up.
So while a Presidential election will see higher turnout than a midterm, I do think we’ll see less turnout than in 2008 and 2012, which will push the share of the minority vote that Republicans win a bit higher. So 33%.
Keep believing that. Latinos are most concerned about protecting their families and the most direct threat to that in their view is the Republican party and the proposing of legislation to make their lives more difficult. A powerful military is way, way down on the priority list.
Neither party can meet that concern. This President deported more than anyone. It’s called the law. And neither party is proposing a change in law that would shield every family member from deportation.
I think you will be proven to be incorrect, I certainly hope you are. Hispanic people voting Republican is almost as ridiculously idiotic as blacks voting Republican.
Yet 3-4 times as many do it, so there must be a lot of idiots among that demographic compared to African-Americans.
Or, people tend to vote their interests. Latinos, unlike African-Americans, tend to get more Republican as their income rises. A third generation Latino is probably indistinguishable from a white voter in terms of voting behavior.
Yes, and Hispanics are concerned about the increased percentage of deportations under Obama; they’re not blind to it, even as Republicans seem to be.
However, as the Obama administration is following the already existing laws vis-a-vis immigration, Republicans are proposing new laws to make the lives of immigrants even more difficult.
Obama doesn’t get a pass, believe me, but Republicans are so much worse.
Republicans are definitely worse, but lesser of two evils doesn’t drive turnout. Latino turnout has often been incredibly lackluster due to this.
Really though, the differences in interests here are irreconcilable. There will never be a US immigration policy that recent immigrants can be satisfied with. There are tens of millions of Latinos who want to enter the country and it ain’t gonna happen, and those who snuck in, many will be going back home. There is just no plausible policy that Americans can agree on that won’t entail that, so Latinos will just have to be perpetually uninspired by either party. Which is probably why so many of them vote pocketbook issues, especially when they have money. It’s not idiotic, it’s perfectly rational.
There’s just no plausible way that Democrats can win the same kind of loyalty from Hispanic voters that they’ve established with black voters, because there is no right to immigrate here. So Latinos will always be at risk of having family members sent back disproportionate to other ethnic groups.
You do realize TRUMP is raising turnout among low-income white voters with his brand of populism? Not to mention that Hillary Clinton is quite popular with Latinos and she’s going to help raise turnout amongst them (consider that Clinton won more of the Hispanic vote in 2008 then she did the white vote).
Labels matter much more than substance-most voters will immediately associate a Democratic candidate with the more permissive stance on immigration and vote accordingly? Its not as if either Republicans or Sanders (who voted against the 2007 immigration bill) have much vested interest in trumpeting the news either-the only ones who will be are some hilarious third party jokes who nobody cares about excepting some whiny college students and annoying professional activists. I mean look at black voters-they love the Clintons crime bill or not.
Trump will not be on the ballot, and while Clinton is popular with Latinos her cynical brand of poiltics will not exactly bring out the hope and change crowd.
The crime bill though had mixed effects among the black community. African-Americans decry mass incarceration while welcoming their safer neighborhoods. Deportation policy is a more zero sum game. Yes, Democrats are better on deportation, but still pretty bad if you have an undocumented family member. “Hey, if I vote Democrat, my grandfather has a 15% lower chance of being deported! I’m going to run, not walk, to my local precinct!”
Now of course I’m mostly thinking aloud here. I don’t know for sure why so many Latinos vote Republican. But a significant enough number do(over a third) that they have to have their reasons and i suspect it’s no more complex than both parties are bad on deportation, but one party is definitely better for my wallet.
Maybe or maybe not in the general but he’ll certainly be in the primaries and if Hillary is smart she’ll try to win over the white working-class voters who do turnout for the primaries.
Except Democrats (especially non-college students/wealthy suburbanites who are the only ones who really give a fuck about Clinton’s “pandering” or “lack of principles” or whatever bullshit excuse they have for voting for Nader or some awful “Moderate Hero” Republican instead respectively instead of the dreaded Hillary Clinton) don’t particularly see Clinton’s brand of politics as cynical.
Again who besides some random columnists on Salon hacking it out for Sanders is trumpeting the mass deportations under Obama? From the perspective of your average Hispanic voter (and in reality) there is a day and night difference between the Democratic and Republican stances on immigration-only one of the parties unequivocally supports a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
A path to citizenship which will apply to some, but not all, members of your family, depending on their individual circumstances. And your recently arrived family members are completely left out.
If the day and night difference was so obvious, how else to explain the fairly robust Latino support for the GOP? I have to think they don’t see the differences as so clearly day and night.