Posted on 06/27/2012 8:35:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Both parties and both Presidential candidates have focused intently on the growing Hispanic demographic in the US in hopes of either maintaining an edge (Barack Obama) or eroding it (Mitt Romney). Both candidates addressed the NALEO conference this month, and both regularly run Spanish-language ads to woo these voters in the Southwest and in Florida. But will it make that much of a difference? National Journal's Josh Kraushaar looks at turnout data from primaries in these areas and concludes that the Hispanic vote may be significantly overrated:
If there was any doubt about the importance of the Hispanic vote this election year, President Obama laid it to rest with his recent, aggressive courtship of Latino voters. But this month also provided fresh warnings to the Obama campaign that Hispanic voters, despite their growing numbers, aren’t all that interested in turning out to vote.
The evidence can be drawn from the House primaries that took place in states with significant Hispanic populations over the last month, particularly California, New York, and Texas. In contests from Southern California to Spanish Harlem, Hispanic candidates suffered political disappointments because of low turnout from their own voters.
In Texas, the failure could possibly be chalked up to a lack of enthusiasm among Democratic Hispanics in an overwhelmingly Republican state. But what’s the explanation for California, where Democrats control every statewide office and both chambers of the legislature?
But in California, the party took a major hit when its favored candidate in a 49.4 percent-Latino battleground district didn’t even qualify for the ballot. Redlands Mayor Pete Aguilar was one of the party’s brightest recruits, and looked like an early favorite against Republicans Rep. Gary Miller (who didn’t live in the district he was running in) and state Sen. Bob Dutton. But turnout in the district’s fast-growing Hispanic core was anemic, and Aguilar didn’t even qualify for the general election ballot, finishing in third place in the all-party primary. This, in a district Obama carried with over 55 percent of the vote.
This was the embarrassing outcome of the electoral “reform” pushed by California Democrats a couple of years ago — the open primary. Instead of two primaries, one for each party, each office now only gets one, and everyone votes in it. The top two vote-getters proceed to the general election. Democrats insisted that having independents participating in the open primaries would produce more moderate candidates, but most figured that it would lock Republicans out of certain House districts. Instead, the too-cute-by-half effort doomed Aguilar and will put one of two Republicans in this seat instead.
Aguilar, as Kraushaar notes, ran explicitly on immigration reform in this race. It still didn’t produce the kind of Hispanic-voter turnout envisaged by Democrats. That should be a warning flare to Obama and the Democrats, who have tried to change the subject from jobs and the economy this month with Obama’s executive action to temporarily provide work permits to illegal immigrants rather than prosecute them. If that isn’t generating turnout in House primaries for Hispanic candidates, it’s not going to do much in November for Obama, either.
one assumes that the PRI party has held onto power in Mexico for over 90 years largely due to voter apathy.
Year: 2004 Proposition 200, an Arizona state initiative passed with 56% of the vote, it requires individuals to produce proof of citizenship before they may register to vote or apply for public benefits in Arizona.
Opposition to Prop 200 was bipartisan: Senator John McCain (R), Senator Jon Kyl (R), Governor Janet Napolitano (D), the Arizona Republican Party, the Arizona Democratic Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the AFL-CIO, and other elected officials and organizations were all opposed to Protect Arizona Now.
Prop 200 won the support of 47 percent of the state's Hispanic citizens.
In a very close election, which is what the professionals always prepare and act on, it can be a decisive factor (a segment going all in one direction). In a blowout or a solidly decided election (say what we just saw in Wisconsin) it is completely irrelevant. They always prepare for and run as if it is Bush V. Gore or Nixon V. Humphrey.
In my own opinion, this election is not one of those...it is more like Carter V. Reagan than like the nail-biters.
I hope only the educated hispanics vote, the ones who came here legally and I cannot believe they go for obummer’s crap.
If I had to stand in line waiting for a ride at Disney World and someone just cut in in front of me it is only human nature to get mad. How can that be any different than illegals gaining citizenship while legals are waiting in line? I think nomobumma is barking up the wrong tree.
Don't forget...Reagan was the underdog until the votes were counted.
I agree...and I think this one breaks decidedly...and in the same way.
What is overrated is the amnesty issue. Republicans need to understand that there are a lot of Hispanic families that work hard, and care about the futures of their children, their businesses, and their liberty. Open borders harm them as much as the rest of us. ...There are millions of Hispanic Catholics who are under attack by the Obama regime, and the Republican Party should be standing with them, in the same way Reagan stood with the moral majority. There is a genuine possibility here for the Republican Party to shift a major demographic in their direction, and all Republicans have to do is do the right thing.
RE: Prop 200 won the support of 47 percent of the state’s Hispanic citizens.
Which still means the majority of Hispanics in Arizona were against it.
The pansey Republicans would do better forgetting about the diversity and stand up for individual rights and freedoms. IOWs get some principles!
So, you think Republicans should drop 47% and make a try for 53%?
Apparently the GOP-E agrees with you.
Yes, the Latino vote is overrated. A large percentage of it is located in deep blue states that will not go Republican under any circumstances.
The swing vote that put Obama in office was the white guilt vote, the votes of guilt-ridden white moderates, or independents, who just felt so darn good voting for a black guy in 2008. If that group has come to their senses, Obama will lose in November no matter what the Latino vote does.
And the GOPe seems totally clueless about how many conservative votes all their pandering and compromising can cost the Republican ticket.
Republicans almost never win the Catholic vote (five times in history), and they will never win the Hispanic Catholic vote, at least without moving far to the left.
I would agree with you, were it not for the fact that the Obama regime has gone to war with Catholics. The way to take advantage of that isn’t by moving to the left, but by defending religious freedom from leftist government. Whether or not we get a majority of the Catholic vote doesn’t matter. We need to increase our influence with people who will vote their values. When the moral majority turned the South, a lot of lifelong Democrats became life long conservatives.
The democrats lost Southerners because of religious issues decades ago but Catholics don’t vote from a religiously conservative point of view.
I’m a conservative Catholic and have been disgusted by the Church’s social justice foolishness. In church last week I heard a very stongly worded letter read by the priest that sounded like a call to arms. I have never heard that in a Mass before. Not even a few months ago when the initial Catholic consternation resulted in another letter from the bishops. The agitation is growing and now that the Court has not stopped it, I believe millions of my formerly blind Catholic brethren are opening their eyes.
That is what I am hoping for, an American Catholic revolt.
I want conservative Catholics to first, learn the truth about how their denominational culture of faith is actually expressed in the voting booth, and then to get angry about it and take it into their churches and insist on some good old fashioned American right wing insistance to move their leadership and fellow Catholics to support the corresponding politics, activism, and voting, of the things that they profess to believe, or that conservative Catholics think that they should be believing.
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