Without looking at exits and doing a thesis on the historical Hispanic vote I will point out a couple of facts. Reagan won a huge landslide in 84 so I would imagine all demographics dropped some in 88. George W received over 40% do to outreach and support for guest worker program. In 2004 exits had 54-45 Kerry. After the argument about amnesty the bottom dropped out for McCain . Now in defense of this it was a bad year for republicans so let’s fast forward to Romney. In Obama’s 1st term we had thencontencious fight with Sotomayor which many in Hispanic community saw as racist. Then the AZ papers please law. This was universally panned in the hispanic press as targeting. The bottom for Romney dropped even further. So if you would like to point out facts lets not be selective. We went from a nine point deficit in which Bush barely beats Kerry to 75-25 and the Dems running the table in battleground states. Hell NM used to be a battleground state. Today not so much. What other effects have there been? Asian Americans also voted overwhelming democratic.
Just to look into the future a little by 2050 1/2 the country is supposed to be of color. As of 2008 republicans lost people of color by 80-20. Please explain to me how the party will be relevant without a strong outreach?
Now, based on faulty/dubious polling and revisions by groups like the National Elections Pool, the "Bush won 44 percent of the Latino vote in 2004" myth was created. That was due to revisions of his latino vote percentages in places like Texas and Oklahoma ( we're talking about 59 to 74 percent ). Initially, the NEP was saying that Kerry was likely to defeat Bush, and well, when that didn't pan out, they were forced to "revise" their numbers in order to help save face. In the end, Bush still got under 40 percent.
Long story short, is that if you truly want to win and retain the hispanic vote, then you have to bring in the better skilled/educated immigrants from Latin America.
Look what happened in Florida : Prior to the 1980 Mariel boat lift ( 1960's and early seventies ) Cuban immigrants were from Cuba's bourgeois class who fled in the aftermath of Castro's revolution. From '80 forward, the Cuban immigrants came from Cuba's underclass.
Pre-Mariel Cubans and their children were decidedly anti-communist and pro business reflecting their bourgeois outlook and values. Post-Mariel Cubans and their children simply didn't have the same kind of ideological outlook and adopted an outlook typical of individuals on the lower half of the socioeconomic ladder; - consequently, they didn't have much of a problem gravitating towards the Democratic party.
The end result is that Obama ran away with Cuban American vote in Florida in 2012.
The same kind of turning point happened in with the 1986 Amnesty with regards to Mexican Americans. Millions of illegals were given amnesty; - millions more were legalized via the rolling extensions. All of those immigrants wound sponsoring all sorts other relatives to come to the country. These groups were at the bottom end of the socioeconomic ladder. And illegal immigration only got worse post-1986.
All of this wound up tilting the Mexican American segment of the electorate even further to the left. The GOP would actually be in a better position right now if the '86 amnesty had never been passed in the first place.
The old guard has been dying off, and the "new guard" is gaining ascendancy. That's the actual underlying reason for the declining percentages of the Latino vote.
Sotomayor deserved to grilled considering how this jurist said that she didn't even know, post- Heller, if a right to self defense actually existed. That type of position should have stunned anyone that considers themselves even remotely conservative. Then her ridiculous ruling that claimed that a job test, in and of itself, could be biased against black applicants. And thus, had to changed. Can anyone give me an example of a "biased" test question...? Answer : No.
The papers please controversy is nonsense. The Arizona legislation was based almost word for word on federal legislation that had been signed into law by Bill Clinton.
And what do you think happens in Mexico? Law enforcement down there has always had the right to inquire about someone's status. I'm talking from personal experience. You get pulled over for any sort of traffic violation, the officer in question does have the right to ask you those type of questions.
Moreover, our government and State Department have always recognized the right of law enforcement entities in other countries to ask these types of questions of our own citizens who are traveling and working abroad. Americans understand this sort of thing is S.O.P..