The 3 Latino Electorates Within Florida and How they Differ

With all the newfound interest in the Latino vote in Florida almost all coverage has missed an interesting and very important nuance – there is not one single Latino electorate in Florida, but rather, at least three distinct blocs. In order to best understand Latino preferences in the Sunshine state on Tuesday, and more so in November, election observers – and the candidates – would be wise to hone in on the important differences between three key segments of the Latino vote in Florida.

A few days ago, Latino Decisions released a poll in partnership with Univision News and ABC which found Romney besting Gingrich in the Republican primary, and Obama head of both Republicans in a potential match-up in November. However a closer look at the data reveals important differences within the Florida Latino electorate. Most obvious, and well known, are the differences between the South Florida, Miami-Broward Latino population which is predominantly Cuban American, and the Central Florida, Orlando-Tampa population with a large Puerto Rican. Further, within the Cuban population, important differences exist between the older more conservative immigrant generation, and the somewhat younger and much more moderate U.S. born Cuban American electorate. Readers can find full results of our Florida survey here, with banner points for Cuban, Puerto Rican, Miami, Orlando, and other differences within the state.

In this post, we summarize the key distinctions for issues and vote choice within the Florida Latino electorate. In courting and mobilizing the Latino vote in Florida Republican candidates, the President, and their surrogates can not take a one size fits all approach. Instead they should fine tune different approaches to the Latino vote in Miami versus Orlando or Tampa, and take into account different viewpoints of Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Nicaraguans, Dominicans, and other Latinos who make up important components of the overall Florida electorate.

Candidate Favorability

Overall, we find Obama fares well in Florida with a 60 percent favorability rating, however there is considerable variation by the three Florida electorates identified above.  Among Cuban immigrants, just 46% hold a favorable view of President Obama, compared to 51% among U.S. born Cubans, and 69% among Latinos in the Orlando-Tampa greater markets in Central Florida.  Similarly, we see segmentation on views of Romney with 56% of foreign-born Cubans being favorable, but just 44% of U.S. born Cuban Americans, and just 36% favorable in the largely Puerto Rican Central Florida.  Gingrich, who is less popular overall, still sees the same pattern by group.  Finally, Senator Marco Rubio remains very popular among Cuban immigrants, but his favorability is nearly 30 points lower among U.S. born Cubans, and Latinos in Orlando and Tampa.  At the same time, when asked if the selection of Rubio as a vice presidential candidate would make Latinos more likely, or less likely to vote for the GOP ticket, Rubio has overwhelming draw among foreign-born Cubans with 70% saying they would be more likely to vote Republican and only 9% saying it would make them less likely. Yet among U.S. born Cubans the advantage narrows considerably, and among those in Central Florida the Rubio bump is even smaller. Rather than widespread, it would seem his appeal is concentrated.

Different Views on the Issues

When it comes to the economy and immigration, the two most important issues to Latinos in Florida, once again three interesting groupings of results emerge.  When we asked who is more to blame for the current economic problems in America, 59% of Orlando-Tampa area Latinos blame the policies of the Bush administration and 27% blame the Obama administration.  Among Cubans, there is a split with a 51-27 ratio of blaming Bush-to-Obama for the poor state of the economy, while among immigrant Cubans a 28-55 Bush-to-Obama ratio emerges.  When asked about how to best improve the economy, foreign born Cubans are much more likely to prefer lowering taxes (48%) than government investment in programs (33%), and U.S. born Cuban Americans are equally split with 45% favoring lower taxes and 44% favoring government investment.  Among Latinos in the Orlando-Tampa metro areas just 30% say lower taxes and 58% say government stimulus.

Finally, when we look to immigration, for the first time more similarity than difference is found.  Support for the DREAM Act remains high among all segments of the Florida Latino electorate with over 75% of all subgroups indicating support for earned citizenship if undocumented immigrant youth attend college or serve in the military.  Likewise, when we examine comprehensive immigration reform a majority of all Latinos in Florida support an earned path to citizenship, though U.S. born Cuban Americans, and Latinos in Central Florida are somewhat more likely to support CIR.

Looking Ahead to November 2012

While differences are likely to emerge within the Latino vote during Tuesday’s Republican primary, they may not be as apparent as they will be in November.  Republicans are far more likely to be comprised of Cuban immigrants, while U.S. born Cubans are fairly split between the two parties, and Puerto Ricans, found in large number in the Orlando and Tampa areas are far more likely to identify as Democrat.  While such claims have been made before, it is always best to look at the actual data, to see what trends are born out.

In a general election match-up between Obama and Romney, statewide the Univision/ABC/Latino Decisions survey reported 50% for Obama and 40% for Romney.  Within the three Latino electorates we identify here we find sizable differences.  Foreign-born Cubans side with Obama at 27% and 63% for Romney.  Their children – U.S. born Cuban Americans – give Obama 50% and Romney just 36%.  More stark, in the Orlando and Tampa markets, 61% support Obama and 29% for Romney.  Looking at a Gingrich nomination, the same patterns emerge.  Cuban immigrants are reliable Republican votes, while U.S. born Cubans trend Democrat, and Central Florida Latinos are the most likely to support Obama over Gingrich.

The 3 Latino Electorates Within Florida

Not only during the primary phase, but again in the general, all eyes will be on Florida, and the Latino vote here will be crucial. But unlike other states with large Latino populations in the Southwest, the Latino population in Florida is the most diverse, both politically and ethnically. As candidates engage the Florida Latino electorate they need to keep in mind the unique differences between Miami and Central Florida; between Puerto Ricans and Cubans; and among Cubans, emerging differences between immigrants and U.S. born.  The three groups we examine here are the largest and most distinct, but by no means are they only Latino groups in Florida.  Very large numbers of Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, and Mexican Latinos are spread out across Florida.  While the data usually points to these other Latino groups as looking more similar to the Orlando-Tampa results presented here, additional nuances remain. Candidates and groups hoping to influence need to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach, and be sure to fine tune their outreach plans, and campaign commercials to reach different Latino audiences in Miami, Orlando, Tampa and elsewhere, and get to know the intricacies of the Latino electorate in Florida if they hope to win big in November.

Matt A. Barreto, Ph.D., is co-founder of Latino Decisions, and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington.  He can be reached at matt.barreto@latinodecisions.com

Gingrich Latino Puzzle

This article was originally published at NBC Latino

Judging by the more than 400 “likes” on Newt Gingrich – Para Latinos Facebook, Newt Gingrich should do well with Latinos in the Florida primary this coming Tuesday. By contrast, Mitt Romney only has a dozen or so “likes” on his page.  But Facebook popularity does not win elections because according to the Univision-ABC-Latino Decisions poll released this week of Latino Florida voters Romney wins the popularity contest that really matters.

Less than a week before the primary, Mitt Romney’s favorability among Latinos in Florida is at 40%, comfortably ahead of Newt Gingrich’s 33% approval. More specifically, Romney’s favorables are not only higher but his unfavorables are lower than Gingrich’s. When these Latino voters were asked who they would vote for, Romney’s favorability ratings translated into solid vote intentions, 35%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 20%, Ron Paul at 6%, and Rick Santorum at 8%.

Gingrich may be surging among the general electorate in Florida, but among Floridian Latinos a surge has yet to materialize. They refuse to embrace Newt Gingrich even though he is the only candidate that has coordinated a consistent Latino outreach effort since late 2010. His is the only campaign with a full fledged Spanish language website, presidentegingrich.com, which greets the Latino visitors with a list of 10 reasons why he’s their guy. Romney on the other hand has a a rinky-dink English language page that looks like a low-tech blog.

The lack of Latino love for Gingrich is even more puzzling given he has stood alone among the GOP primary candidates in his less draconian views toward immigration reform. Meanwhile, Romney who has advocated an enforcement-only approach to immigration, said he would veto the DREAM Act, and suggested self-deportation as a way to address our failed immigration system. It would seem that Latinos who continue to rank immigration as the first or second most important issue area would support the candidate that is closer to their issue positions.

The answer to Gingrich’s Florida Latino slump is simple – Cuban-Americans. This group makes up a little more than half of the Latino electorate in Florida and this group by and large is not personally affected by immigration because of their legal status. This is not to say that Cuban-Americans do not support immigration reform or the DREAM Act, they simply are not as personally affected by the issue as Mexican immigrants. In the latest Univision-ABC-Latino Decisions poll, 36% of Cuban-American voters indicated immigration was the most important issue facing the Latino community, while half of Mexican-American voters named immigration their top concern.

Romney may not have a polished Latino-targeted website and a large Latino Facebook following. But who needs that, when you have the endorsements of the most prominent national Cuban-American political leaders, Ileana Roth-Leithen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and Mario Diaz-Balart. Romney has also garnered a long list of endorsements from city and state Latino leaders. Finally, the rumors that Marco Rubio is on the short list for Romney’s running mate can’t hurt.

Not all is lost for Gingrich in his quest for the Latino vote. His outreach and policy positions place him as a frontrunner among the Latino electorate in Texas, the state with the second largest Latino population. The former Speaker also edges out Romney among Independent Latino voters at the national level, an especially crucial electorate to consider looking to the general election. Finally, Gingrich shows the strongest approval ratings from foreign-born Latino voters showing that his immigration policy position has indeed paid off.

Seen from the microscope of Florida, Gingrich’s Latino outreach seems to have failed. However, once the lens is zoomed out Gingrich’s apparent Latino puzzle dissolves. He will have to continue to court the Latino Republican and Independent vote but in the meantime, his time and monetary investments have provided a solid groundwork among Latinos moving beyond January 31^st.

Dr. Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto is the Communications Director for Latino Decisions and Fellow at the Center for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, at Austin. Connect with her at: drvmds@latinodecisions.com

Latino Decisions/Univision/ABC releases new poll on voters in Florida, and nationally

In partnership with Univision News and ABC News, Latino Decisions has released two new polls of the Latino electorate and the 2012 presidential contest. The polls interviewed 500 Latino registered voters nationally, and a second poll of 500 Latino registered voters in the state of Florida. Full results are posted here.

Latino Decisions asked vote choice among likely Republican primary voters, favorability ratings for all candidates as well as President Obama, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Susana Martinez and more, and general election match-ups between Obama-Romney; and Obama-Gingrich. Other topics covered issues such as the economy, immigration, health care, and perceptions of party outreach to Hispanics.

Additional results can be found on the Univision News website here

Tomorrow, Latino Decisions analysts will be posting more detailed and in-depth review and commentary on the poll results, and implications for 2012.

Conference Call to Focus on Florida as First Major Latino State

Latino Community Tele-Forum:  “The Latino Primary 2012”

Conference Call to Focus on Florida as First Major Latino State

MIAMI – The National Institute for Latino Policy will convene a national teleconference of Latino leaders from across the country next Monday, January 23, to host a Community Tele-Forum entitled “The Latino Primary 2012”   In the 2008 election, the wave of the massive Latino vote helped propel Barack Obama to victory.  With polls showing growing disappointment with President Obama among Latino voters, the upcoming primary in Florida, the first primary state with a major Latino population, raises the question, “Will Latinos vote Republican in 2012?

Held just one week before the Florida primary, The Latino Primary 2012 will allow invited experts and leaders to shed light on what to expect with first major voting contest involving the Latino vote.  “Florida represents the first contest of the Latino primary season, a stretch of state primaries involving significant Latino voting populations” said Angelo Falcón, President and Founder of the National Institute for Latino Policy, the event’s sponsor.

The Latino Primary 2012 will help provide a range of analysis and discussion from scholars, political leaders, and community advocates to help navigate and understand what direction the wave of the Latino vote will take in 2012.

To view the full list of contests in the Latino Primary Season, see below.

WHAT

“The Latino Primary 2012”: Latino Community Tele-Forum analyzing the Latino Vote in 2012 Election on the eve of the Florida primary

WHO

Gary Segura, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; Co Founder and Principal, Latino Decisions.  Professor Segura will preview some new data on Latino voters in Florida and across the country.

Maria del Rosario Rodriguez, Co-Founder, Florida Immigrant Coalition

Arturo Carmona, Executive Director, Presente.org

Isabel Garcia, Executive Director, Derechos Humanos, Tucson, Arizona

Angelo Falcón, President and Founder, National Institute for Latino Policy

Other guests to be announced

WHEN

Monday, January 23, 2012

1pm Eastern  |  10 am Pacific

WHERE

Conference Call Dial In Number: 800-862-9098

Conference ID: LATINO

Program Title: Latino Primary 2012

2012 Primaries – Latino Primary Season

Jan. 31: Florida primary

Feb. 4: Nevada caucuses

Feb. 7: Colorado caucuses

Feb. 28: Arizona primary

March 3: Washington State caucuses

March 6: Super Tuesday — Georgia primary

March 18: Puerto Rico primary

March 20: Illinois primary

April 3: Texas primary

April 24: Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island primaries

May 8: North Carolina primary

May 15: Oregon primary

June 5: California, New Jersey, New Mexico primaries

June 26: Utah primary

Latino Voters Go Beyond Immigration

This article originally appeared in the January 30, 2012 issue of The Nation magazine

José Díaz-Balart, chief political analyst for Telemundo, had one important task during the September 7, 2011, Republican debate—to ask the candidates about immigration. Díaz-Balart asked his question, got his answer and was dismissed from the stage. The stereotype was fulfilled; a Latino asked one question and the one question was about immigration. With that box checked, the moderators and candidates were able to return to “non-Latino” issues.

The problem is, the issues that keep Latinos up at night—like double-digit unemployment rates, living at the poverty end of the wealth gap and having the highest high school dropout rates in the country—go well beyond immigration. Herein lies the challenge for President Obama. He must recast his connection with Latino voters beyond a narrow focus on immigration and engage Latinos as the multi-issue electorate they are.

It’s easy to see why Latinos have been typecast within the narrow frame of immigration. The vast majority are immigrants or the children or grandchildren of immigrants. In 2008 then-candidate Barack Obama used the issue to connect with Latinos by highlighting the importance of immigration reform. This strategy was wildly successful and netted him close to 70 percent of the Latino vote. Today that strategy is counterproductive. Latino voters are keenly aware that “La Promesa de Obama”—as his campaign pledge for comprehensive immigration reform became known—was not fulfilled. And now they have other priorities: according to the latest impreMedia-Latino Decisions tracking polls, economics have eclipsed immigration as their top concern. For Latinos, the economy and the related issue of education have come to demand the same level of attention that President Obama once gave immigration.

Since 2009 minority unemployment has been in the double digits. At its height in 2010, Latino unemployment was at
13.9 percent; today it’s 11 percent. Latinos have been the hardest hit in the recession, and they have the steepest climb to recovery. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Latino median wealth plummeted 66 percent between 2005 and 2009. The decrease in wealth nationally was the most acute among Latinos, leaving one-third of the community either with debt or no assets.

Latinos are losing not only their jobs, benefits and homes but their hard-earned position in the middle class. Within one generation families have gone from working class to middle class and back to working class again. The wealth gap between minorities and non-minorities is the largest since the Census Bureau began providing this information in 1984. The white-to-Latino ratio of median wealth in 2009 stood at 18 to 1, more than twice the ratio before the recession. The gap between rich and poor has also become a serious problem within the Latino community, with their wealth disparity the greatest of any group.

In addition to having experienced the steepest decrease in wealth, Latinos have the highest birthrates and the lowest levels of education. Latino dropout rates are triple those of whites and double those of African-Americans. Education is particularly important to Latinos because more than one-third are under 18. In 2008–09, in the two largest public school districts, New York City and Los Angeles, Latino children made up 41 percent and 74 percent, respectively, of incoming first graders.

At first glance it would seem that because of the magnitude of their economic losses and their grim educational position, Latinos would be the most punishing of the president’s policies. But the data suggest that Latinos want more government involvement, not less, making them unreceptive to the message of the GOP and particularly the Tea Party. During last summer’s debt debate, an impreMedia-Latino Decisions poll showed that 
83 percent of Latino voters supported some sort of tax increase in the debt reduction plan. As reflected in the figure below, forty-five percent supported a taxes-only route. Even a majority of Latino Republicans preferred some taxation over a cuts-only approach to the deficit. For Latinos, economic well-being is intimately tied to the economic recovery of the nation; they are progressives who support a robust federal government. The proposal to create a National Infrastructure Bank to bring about job creation is exactly the type of policy that resonates with them.

The GOP has also failed to win the support of Latinos on education. The impreMedia-Latino Decisions polls show that 57 percent of Latino voters support President Obama and the Democrats’ education policy, which has emphasized early childhood education, school reforms and developing community partnerships. Republicans were seen as the better option by 20 percent and a disillusioned 14 percent lacked confidence in both parties.

Indeed, the Latino community’s most tangible achievements under the Obama administration are in the realm of education. The education gap between Latinos and non-Latinos shows clear signs of shrinkage. Dropout rates are decreasing, and from 2009 to 2010 Latino college enrollment grew 24 percent, an increase of 5 percent over the previous year.

And yet, despite recent comments by Jim Messina, President Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, Latino support is not a given for the president. In a December 2011 impreMedia-Latino Decisions poll, 54 percent of registered Latinos said they were certain to vote for Obama. This is a long way from the 70 percent of 2008. Tangible disillusionment was also apparent in the decreased rate of turnout among Latino voters in the 2010 midterm elections, the Pew Hispanic Center reported. In 2011 the president’s approval ratings among Latinos hovered in the 60 percent range. However, this aggregate figure combines “Strongly Approve” and “Somewhat Approve,” obscuring the fact that more than half of his approval is from the lukewarm “Somewhat Approve” category. The implication is grave, since participation is fueled by enthusiastic voters who have strong feelings about their candidate.

If the president is to get past his failed immigration pledge and reconnect with Latino voters, he must do two things: highlight the natural ideological affinities between himself and Latinos, and showcase the economic and educational programs he has implemented and will continue to promote. Simple electoral math puts Latinos at the forefront of the president’s re-election strategy in the 2012 election. Latino voters make up at least 15 percent of the population in half of the top swing states—Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Nevada. They are a crucial part of the electoral formula necessary to prevent President Obama from being the third Democratic president in history not to get a second term in office—and they deserve to have the full range of their concerns understood.

Dr. Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto is the Communications Director for Latino Decisions and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Connect with her at: drvmds@latinodecisions.com

You can also listen to an accompanying podcast featuring Dr. DeFrancesco Soto here.

Language Translation and Latino Health Outcomes

The issue of language translation has concerned survey researchers for some time. While much of this work has been conducted by scholars interested in making comparisons across nations with differences in language use, research focused on the United States has had to consider the potential bias associated with translation more recently. With large foreign-born populations, non-English language use is highly salient for scholars interested in comparisons between these populations and whites. We find that a large segment of Latino respondents, even those that are fully bilingual, prefer to conduct survey interviews in Spanish. For example, 61 percent of respondents to the Latino National Survey (2006), a major national telephone survey of 8,600 respondents, chose to conduct their interview in Spanish.  Given the high number of respondents who are interviewed in Spanish when bilingual interviewers are utilized, it is critical to have a handle on whether any bias is introduced in the translation process.

Political scientists have found evidence that political concepts introduced to respondents in Spanish are not always equivalent to those in English, although it is generally assumed that the measures utilized in both languages are tapping into the same concept. Researchers focused on understanding racial and ethnic health disparities are interested in the ramifications of language translation bias as well. Some suggest that bias associated with the language of interview has led to higher observed rates of Latino health status than would be normally expected. For example, a recent article in the American Journal of Public Health suggested that the translation of the category fair to regular in the typical self-rated health measure utilized in many surveys may denote a more positive meaning in Spanish than it is intended to, thus inflating self-reports of health among Spanish speaking Latinos.  While scholars have yet to directly test this hypothesis, a recent Viruell-Fuentes et al. (2010) study finds that conducting the survey interview in Spanish was in correlated with an increased likelihood of rating health as fair or poor across two datasets, even when controlling for several other factors.

To more directly test whether language of interview impacts observed rates of Latino health status, I included a split-sample research design in a recent Latino Decisions survey. In short, we manipulated the Spanish translation of the response category fair in questionnaires administered to respondents who elected to take the survey in Spanish so that half of the Spanish language respondents were provided the phrase mas o menos and the other half the more commonly used regular. It is important to note that this research design requires a large sample of Spanish speaking Latinos that is similar to the actual population. The Latino Decisions methodological approach ensures that fully bilingual interviewers are utilized for each call and that each respondent is greeted in both English and Spanish. These steps result in large sub-samples of Spanish speaking Latinos.

The descriptive statistics from this experiment suggest that translation terminology does impact Latino self-rated health status. As depicted in the table below, the mean for the health status variable is higher when respondents are provided the phrase mas o menos  (3.01) as compared to regular (2.92). The frequencies associated with each translation approach also suggest that differences in translation influence observed Latino health status, as more respondents select the fair category when posed with the term regular (37%) as compared to mas o menos (30%). This appears to support the argument that the use of the term regular suppresses Latino health status among Spanish speaking respondents.

Given the rise in surveys including large samples of Latinos, understanding the potential ramifications of language translation bias is both important and timely. This brief analysis suggests that split-sample approaches, like the one used here, can help us improve our knowledge of this issue. Given the salience of this issue within the public health literature, these initial results may hopefully lead to additional work in this area.

Gabriel R. Sanchez is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico and Research Director for Latino Decisions.

Searching for a National Latino Leader

A recent blog to the Latino Decisions page noted that Susana Martinez and Marco Rubio, both mentioned as possible Vice Presidential candidates, were largely unknown by Latino voters. While somewhat surprising, this seems to be in line with other surveys focused on Latino’s knowledge of Latino political leaders. For example, a 2010 poll by the Pew Hispanic Center asked 1,375 Latino adults to name the person they consider “the most important Latino leader in the country today”. A robust 64% of respondents said they “did not know”, and another ten percent of the sample responded that there “is none”. The most frequently cited Leader, at only 7%, was Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor.

This apparent lack of Latino political leadership comes after a period of unprecedented growth in political representation for Latinos. According to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials most recent directory of elected officials, the number of Latino elected officials increased by 53% from 3,734 in 1996 to 5,850 in 2011.  This rise in Latino political representation appears to be apparent at all levels of public office. Specifically, the number of Latinos represented in Congress has more than doubled from 12 legislators in the 101^st Congress (1989-1990) to a high of 28 Latino members of Congress in the 109^th (2005-2006). This rise in Latinos in Congress is apparent in figure one below. Here you can see a steady climb in the number of Latinos within Congress over time, especially in the House, with a high of 28 in the 109^th Congress. While the number of Latinos in Congress has dropped slightly over the past two election cycles, the 26 members serving in the 112^th Congress is much greater than the 19 who served a decade ago.

 

This rise in Latino representation is even more apparent at the state level. Since the 1970’s the percentage of Latinos in state legislatures across the U.S. has increased steadily. For example, from 1996 to 2010 there has been a 57% increase in the percentage of Latinos elected to state legislatures, with 245 Latinos represented in state legislatures across the nation. And as noted above, two Latinos are currently serving as Governors of their state: New Mexico’s Susana Martinez and Nevada’s Brian Sandoval. Finally, the election of Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor of Los Angeles symbolizes similar representation trends at this level. Major cities such as Denver, San Antonio, and Miami have elected Latino mayors, as well as several smaller cities such as Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Austin and El Paso. At least one of these mayors, San Antonio’s Julian Castro, has received major national attention, referenced by the New York Times as the “Post-Hispanic Hispanic Politician”.

The rise in Latino representation in elected offices across all levels of government has definitely provided a strong and growing pool of potential national leaders. However, although there has clearly been a rise in Latino representation, the question remains as to whether Latinos, themselves, views these elected officials as leaders of their community. The results of the Pew survey appear to suggest that the diversity among Latinos in regard to partisanship, region, and nativity etc. may hinder their ability to rally around a national Latino leader. Although the Pew poll was conducted just prior to the election of Rubio and Martinez, the November, 2011 Latino Decisions poll provides the ability to explore this possibility.

The November poll reveals sizable differences in favorability for Marco Rubio based on partisanship, with 56% of Latino Republicans indicating that they have either “very” or “somewhat” favorable impressions of the Senator, compared to only 19% among Latino Democrats. There was a more modest 10% point gap based on nativity, with foreign-born Latinos having higher favorability for Rubio. U.S.-born and English dominant Latinos were less knowledgeable of both candidates. Native-born Latinos were 13% more likely to have “never heard of” New Mexico’s Martinez, and 15% more likely to have “never heard of” Florida’s Rubio. This is consistent with the Pew Report, which also found familiarity with Latino leaders to be greater among the foreign-born. Finally, and not surprisingly, both familiarity and favorability for Rubio and Martinez is greater in their respective regions of the country. For example, 23% of Latinos in the Southwest had favorable impressions of Martinez in the November poll, compared to only 8% in New York. Similarly, 44% of Latinos in Florida are favorable towards their home-Senator Rubio, compared to 25% in the Southwest and 19% in New York.

While it is clear that variation within the Latino population will continue to provide challenges to contenders for the title of “national Latino leader”, there are many reasons for optimism. The rise in Latino descriptive representation will provide a natural pool of candidates for higher office, including a potential Vice President in the near future. Further, as the influence of the Latino electorate continues to grow, both parties will be motivated to recruit and develop Latino leaders in an effort to court Latino voters. Finally, the rapid and unexpected rise of President Obama to national prominence provides an example of just how quickly a “national leader” can rise to prominence. In closing, let us not forget that at one point, Hillary Clinton had higher favorability and greater familiarity ratings among African Americans than Barack Obama.

Gabriel R. Sanchez is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico and Research Director for Latino Decisions.

Latina Moms in the 2012 Election

by Victoria DeFrancesco Soto

Soccer moms were the go to gals in the 1996 Presidential election.  Eight years later George W. Bush again looked to the ladies, zeroing in on security moms.  In the last presidential election  a hockey mom herself was put at the top of the ticket.  And leading up to the 2012 election Wal-Mart moms are the political date of choice.

The different “moms” of the last couple of elections have changed names, but they remain generally similar in terms of demographic characteristics – white, middle class, and suburban.  These moms vote and they are moved by tangible day-to-day concerns related to the well-being of their family.  Campaigns are smart to target these women, but would be unwise to do so to the exclusion of the growing population of mamás—Latina moms.

Latinas, like white, black, and Asian women have out-voted their male counterparts for 30 years. In the 2008 election 70.4 million women voted, close to 10 million more women than men.  In that same election 34.3% of eligible Latinas voted while only 29.1% of Latino men did.  This pattern is likely to continue into the 2012 election.  At the same time that this differential will persist, the raw number of Latinas (and Latinos) voting will climb as a result of the rapid population growth within the Latino community that has increased by two million new eligible Latino voters.

Mamás will be a particularly important electorate for President Obama.  While women across the board approve of the President at higher rates than men, the President’s approval is strongest among Latinas.   In the November 2011 Univision-Latino Decisions poll 31% of registered Latinas strongly approved of the President compared to 27% of registered non-Latinas.  This differential widened when the President was paired up against Mitt Romney.  In this hypothetical match-up 47% of non-Latinas stated they were most likely vote for President Obama and among Latinas that figure shot up to 69%.

While as a group Latinos continue to support President Obama at higher rates than whites, Latinas approve of the President more than their male counterparts.  In December 2011 an impreMedia-Latino Decisions poll asked registered Latinos how certain they were in their vote for President Obama or a Republican challenger.  Fifty-four percent of the respondents stated that they were certain to vote for the President.  However, the level of support was not equal among Latino men and women, with 56% of Latinas stating their certainty of support and 51% of Latino men doing the same.  In a follow up question that pitted the President against Mitt Romney, Latinas again indicated that they were more likely to vote for President Obama.

Moms inside and outside of the political arena are a force to be reckoned with, Latina moms not being the exception.  As the Latino population continues to grow the force of mamás will only increase.  If they are courted appropriately Latina moms will prove to be a lifeline to the President’s re-election bid.     However, Latinas, like Latinos in general are an electorate that will cross party lines if a candidate resonates with them.  Moving beyond the 2012 election, Republicans and Democrats alike will need to seek to make mamá happy.

Dr. Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto is the Communications Director for Latino Decisions and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Connect with her at: drvmds@latinodecisions.com

Latinos Rising: Consequences of the 2011 Nevada Redistricting

David F. Damore, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

What a difference a decade makes.  In 2001, despite constituting 20% of Nevada’s population, Latinos received little to no consideration in the state’s redistricting process.[i]  In 2011, representation of the state’s Latino community – now over 26% of Nevada’s population – was the main point of contention that caused Nevada’s reapportionment and redistricting to be completed in state court.[ii]  Throughout redistricting negotiations, Republicans cited the lack of a majority-minority Latino U.S. House district (Nevada was awarded its fourth House seat after the 2010 census) as grounds to oppose maps proposed by the majority Democrats.  Ultimately, because Republican Governor Brian Sandoval’s vetoed two sets of maps passed on party line votes and refused to call a special session to complete Nevada’s redistricting, Carson City District Judge Todd Russell took control of the process and appointed three special masters to complete Nevada’s 2011 redistricting.

Cynics accused the Republicans of using Latino representation as a fig-leaf for broader fears about the political implications of Nevada’s changing demographics.  Between 2000 and 2010, Nevada was the nation’s fastest growing state and is now one of the most urbanized and diverse states in the country – two important drivers of the Democratic vote in the Mountain West.  Specifically, nearly three out of four Nevadan’s reside in Clark County (Las Vegas) and the state’s minority population increased by10% with better than 45% of all Nevadans being classified as non-white by the 2010 U.S. Census.  Aided by a heavy investment in resources and political talent by Reid Inc. (the moniker of the U.S. Senate Majority Leader’s extensive political organization), Nevada Democrats took advantage of these demographic trends to flip the state from Republican leaning to Democratic leaning by decade’s end.  Figure 1, which summaries Democratic electoral strength using Ceaser and Saldin’s Major Party Index and voter registration figures between 2000 and 2010, captures the Democratic rise in Nevada during the prior decade.[iii]

Thus, regardless of the final contours of the maps, changes to the state’s political demography meant that the 2011 redistricting would favor the Democrats.  Instead of accepting this reality, Nevada Republicans clung to a tortured interpretation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in hopes of extracting a more favorable outcome.  Specifically, by claiming that Nevada was required to draw one of its House seats as majority Latino, Republicans were at odds with the Shaw v. Reno (509 U.S. 630 ) holding, which allows race to be considered but not the primary factor (as the Republican proposed House map did) in drawing district boundaries.  Moreover, as Democrats and many allied Latinos noted, packing Latinos into a single U.S. House district would marginalize Latino influence in Nevada’s other three U.S. House districts and because white voters in Nevada do not vote as a block to deny Latinos representation of their preferred candidates as evidenced by the fact that Latino candidates won a number of state legislative seats, the attorney generalship, and the governorship in 2010 without such accommodations, race-based redistricting in Nevada is unnecessary.

By forcing redistricting into the courts, Nevada Republicans miscalculated and ended up with a less favorable outcome than if they had accepted either of the Democratic plans passed during the legislative session.  To be sure, regardless of who drew the maps, the manner in which Nevada’s population is distributed ensured that the outcome for Nevada’s four U.S. House districts would be two safe Democratic seats, one Republican leaning district, and one swing district.  However, in realizing this outcome, the special masters opted not to create a majority Latino House district.  Still, as indicated by the data presented in Table 1, which summarizes the demographic and partisan composition of Nevada’s four U.S. House districts, Latinos constitute 43% of Nevada’s 1^st House District and Latinos of voting age are nearly 37% of the district’s population.  Moreover, except for the Republican leaning district (Nevada’s 2^nd), the Latino population is larger than the Latino voting age population in the other three U.S. House districts suggesting that the demographic transformation of Nevada’s electorate will continue in the coming decade.  Given the extensive mobilization of Nevada’s Latino community by the Democrats since 2004, these trends are particularly troubling for Nevada Republicans who only in the last month hired a Latino outreach coordinator.

Equally problematic for Nevada Republicans are the special masters’ state legislative maps.  Because of growth patterns during the prior decade, southern Nevada was assured of gaining a state senate seat and two assembly seats (48 of 63 seats in the Nevada Legislature are now located in southern Nevada).  Thus, the main issue was which seats would be moved from northern Nevada to the Democratic stronghold of Clark County.  In both of their plans the Democrats proposed moving seats located in and around Washoe County (Reno) to southern Nevada and preserving two stand alone rural state senate districts.  Instead, the special masters created one stand alone rural senate district and moved the other rural state senate seat to southern Nevada.  Moreover, the senate seat in Washoe County that the Democrats had originally proposed to move south was drawn with a Republican registration advantage of less than 1%.

More generally, as the data in Table 2 suggest, for Nevada Republicans to gain the majority in either chamber of the Nevada Legislature in the coming decade will require that Republican candidates consistently win an overwhelming share of the nonpartisan vote (16% of the electorate).  In the state senate, 12 seats have a Democratic voter registration advantage in excess of 5% as compared to only five such seats for the GOP.  And in only one of the four competitive senate district do Republicans have a registration advantage greater than 1%.  The GOP’s prospects are even less favorable in the Assembly where the Democrats now have 25 seats with registration advantages in excess of 5%.  In contrast, there are only eight seats that favor the Republicans and nine seats where neither party enjoys a registration advantage greater than 5%   Lastly, Latinos should be able to continue to increase their ranks in the Nevada Legislature in the coming decade from their present eight given that over a third of all state legislative districts have Latino populations in excess of 30%.

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End Notes

[i] Despite constituting 20% of the population in 2000, after the 2002 midterm election, Hispanics held just 5 % of seats in the state legislature.  For an extended discussion of Nevada’s 2011 redistricting, see David F. Damore, “The 2011 Nevada Redistricting and Perpetuation of the Status Quo,” American Review of Politics (Summer 2006): 149–68

[ii] Population and demographic data cited here come from the U.S. Census Bureau, “State and County Quick Facts,” August 2011 (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html) and U.S. Census, “American Fact Finder,” August 2011 (http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml).

[iii] The Major Party Index combines a party’s electoral support in the most recent presidential, gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House contests and the share of the seats that the party controls in both chambers of the state legislature; see, James W. Ceaser and Robert P. Saldin, “A New Measure of Party Strength,” Political Research Quarterly (June 2005): 245–56.

David F. Damore is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and an expert in Nevada politics.

When We All Become the Immigration Police

By Helen B. Marrow, TuftsUniversity

In July 2011, Governor of Alabama Robert Bentley signed into law a sweeping new anti-immigration bill.  Hailed by Republican lawmakers as the “harshest” in the country, House Bill 56 went far beyondArizona’s Senate Bill 1070, which had made national headlines in 2010.

But on September 28, 2011, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Blackburn blocked the first six provisions in the bill, including ones that made it a state crime for unauthorized immigrants to apply for or solicit work, made it unlawful to conceal, harbor, shield, or transport unauthorized immigrants, and prohibited unauthorized immigrant students from attending public colleges.  Two of the most controversial of the remaining provisions were later enjoined by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit – one that required public schools to track the immigration status of students, and the other that allowed the state to charge someone who fails to produce proof of legal status with a misdemeanor criminal offense.

But the appellate court left in place the remaining provisions.  The ninth provision – unofficially referred to as the “papers please” clause, because it allows state and local police to inquire into the immigration status of anyone stopped or arrested if an officer has a “reasonable” suspicion” that the person is unauthorized – remains controversial because an injunction against its counterpart in Arizona’s SB 1070 was previously upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and is now heading to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The tenth and eleventh provisions – the former denying unauthorized immigrations access to the courts to enforce contracts, and the latter making it a felony for unauthorized immigrants to enter or attempt to enter into business transactions with state or local governments – are even more controversial.  They effectively expand the range of what is considered “illegal” behavior, not just by unauthorized immigrants by alsoU.S.citizens, into new territory.

As Joan Friedland (2011) notes, according to the tenth provision (Section 27), an unauthorized immigrant can enter into a contract but have no legal means to enforce it – if, for instance, an employer fails to pay for work accomplished or overtime completed, or if a landlord fails to keep a rental property in working condition. Likewise, aU.S. citizen landlord can enter into a contract with an unauthorized immigrant but have no legal means to enforce it – if, for instance, the immigrant fails to pay rent or adhere to the provisions of a lease.

According to the eleventh provision (Section 30), an unauthorized immigrant can neither enter nor even attempt to enter into business transactions with state or local governments.  And while U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Blackburn defined a “business transaction” more narrowly to include only licensing and commercial activities, the provision itself defines it more broadly – as “any transaction between a person and the state or a political subdivision of the state”.  Indeed, some local governments have already applied the law to all dealings with state and local government entities, and others have decided that the law limits their provision of public services such as utilities.  The town of Allgood, Alabama has interpreted HB 56 to require all water customers to provide an Alabama’s driver’s license or an Alabama picture ID in order to keep their current water service.  Jefferson County, Alabama has also interpreted the law to require proof of lawful presence for registering a mobile home, including for obtaining the decal proof of payment of property tax.  This provision is so controversial that just this week U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thompson temporarily enjoined its enforcement regarding mobile home owners, arguing that it violates the Fair Housing Act (Hoy 2011).

Whatever happens to the legal fates of Arizona SB 1070 and Alabama HB 56, they highlight a dangerous new trend of what I call bureaucratic and civil cross-deputization.

What do I mean by this?  On its own, “cross-deputization” is the official term used to describe what is happening under law enforcement provisions like the ninth one in HB 56, when state and local police become authorized to engage in activities related to federal immigration enforcement. For much of the last two centuries, state and local policing has been considered as separate from our federal immigration regime. But beginning in 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) added Section 287(g) to the Immigration and Nationality Act, vertically integrating the project of immigration enforcement.  Section 287(g) authorized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to enter into memoranda of agreement with state and local law enforcement agencies to train selected state and local officers to perform certain functions of immigration officers, at their own cost and under the supervision of federal ICE officers. Functions include searching selected federal databases and conducting interviews to assist in identifying those individuals who are in the country illegally.

Thus, under 287(g) memoranda of agreement, an increasing number of state and local law enforcement officers have become cross-deputized as federal immigration agents:  they now have direct access to ICE databases and can act in the stead of ICE agencies by processing aliens for removal, which goes beyond their previous ability to communicate indirectly with ICE regarding the immigration status of individuals, or to otherwise cooperate indirectly with ICE in identification and removal of aliens not lawfully present in the United States.  Moreover, the 287(g) program is just one of 14 covered by the umbrella of ICE’s Agreements of Cooperation in Communities to Enhance Safety and Security.  In fact, a new ICE Secure Communities plan, which is intended to take advantage of the “full interoperability” of the federal government’s biometric identification systems to identify and remove “criminal illegal aliens”, is projected to be made available to all of the nation’s 1,200 state and federal prisons and 3,100 local jails by the end of 2013 (Rodríguez et al. 2010). Under this plan, state and local law enforcement officers will become even more strongly cross-deputized with the powers of federal immigration agents:  they will be able to check all detainees’ fingerprints, and thereby their immigration status and prior immigration violations, against FBI and DHS records as part of routine booking processes.

Nonetheless, the ninth provision of Alabama HB’s 56 is just one of many.   Looking at HB 56’s provisions in their entirety, and comparing them to those in anti-immigrant provisions and bills passed in other states and localities nationwide, suggests a broader trend toward cross-deputization afoot.  This trend involves not only law enforcement officers, who are indeed uniquely authorized among public workers to employ the state’s coercive power.  It also involves a range of the kinds of other “street-level bureaucrats” – such teachers, school and university administrators, healthcare providers, social welfare workers, court officials, and municipal service providers.

For example, it is school teachers and university administrators who find themselves on the front line of immigration policing when local ordinances prohibit unauthorized immigrant students from attending public colleges, or when state bills require public schools to track the immigration status of their students (which, by the way, is not just for “fiscal analysis” purposes only, but rather for an ultimate purpose of trying to prove that their enrollment is an economic burden on U.S. students and taxpayers, so that Plyler v. Doe can be re-challenged in court).  Likewise, it is healthcare providers who find themselves on the front line of immigration policing when local ordinances – like the one passed by Alamance County Commissioners in North Carolina in 2008 – prohibit them from offering nonemergency services to all unauthorized immigrants. And it is court personnel and municipal service providers, respectively, who find themselves on the front line of immigration policing when state bills such as Alabama HB 56 deny courts the ability to enforce contracts involving unauthorized immigrants, or turn business transactions between unauthorized immigrants and state or local government entities into a felony.

In fact, on the ground level it is precisely these kinds of street-level bureaucrats who are resisting politicians’ efforts to cross-deputize their work and roles vis-à-vis immigrants. Sure, some welcome and enforce such efforts.  But by and large, my research in rural North Carolina finds that street-level bureaucrats are more likely to resist bureaucratic cross-deputization than to embrace it.  We can see elements of this resistance elsewhere in the country, too.  Alabama school superintendents and principals issued public service announcements and hosted community forums following the two court rulings around HB 56, in order to try and reassure anxious parents that they and their children would not be reported to immigration officials for having unauthorized status if the kids attended school (Chishti and Bergeron 2011).  In 2006, the Police Chiefs of major U.S. cities issued a set of public recommendations regarding local police involvement in federal immigration policing, arguing that they should focus their efforts on the service-oriented mission of community policing rather than on the regulatory-oriented mission of immigration enforcement (MCC 2006). And healthcare professionals inNorth Carolina fought againstAlamanceCounty’s restrictions, emphasizing the confidentiality of medical records as a central tenet of health care providers’ code of ethics, and the importance of serving unauthorized immigrants to improving total community health.

For many of these street-level bureaucrats, the professional mission of improving a community’s health and well-being encourages service provision, not regulation.  Similarly, the definition of their client bases often extends to all residents in the “local community”, regardless of citizenship or legal status.  For others, sheer discomfort over the complex moral dilemmas raised by having to carry out the job of immigration enforcement becomes too strong.

But it isn’t just street-level bureaucrats, as the public arms of the state, who have become implicated in this new trend toward cross-deputization.  The first five provisions of HB 56 actually targeted employers, including private ones, as well as all state residents, regardless of their occupations.  In this sense, the trend toward cross-deputization evident in HB 56 is not just bureaucratic but also civil.  In other words, I argue that it is intended to turn all members of the surrounding civil society, not just local and state law enforcement officers or other public bureaucrats, into the immigration police.  Perhaps this is why HB 56’s fifth provision – that which made it unlawful to conceal, harbor, shield, or transport unauthorized immigrants – strikes so many of us as problematic, and why it garnered so much opposition, especially from religious leaders (who, not coincidentally, consider “harboring” and “shielding” their flocks from harm to be a positive part of their personal and professional calling).  Often the very civilians who support immigration enforcement in the abstract, as political scientist Antje Ellerman has shown inGermany, struggle much more visibly when they have to become physical witness to it.

Recovering some historical memory would be extremely helpful to combating this trend.  Before the mid-1970s, sociologist Cybelle Fox shows us that unauthorized immigrants were not automatically rendered ineligible for federally-funded public health insurance and social welfare programs.  Before 1986, sociologist Douglas Massey and his colleagues remind us that it was not illegal for employers, whether private or public, to hire unauthorized immigrants.  And before the 1990s and 2000s (by most state laws) and 2005 (via the REAL ID Act of 2005), it was not illegal to issue driver’s licenses to unauthorized immigrants.

We have come a long way, then, in making life hell not only for unauthorized immigrants, but also for ourselves – as the collective range of employers, street-level bureaucrats, and everyday citizens who must now bear witness to immigrants’ struggles in the face of ever-restrictive policies like Arizona’s SB 1070 and Alabama’s HB 56.  Bureaucratic and civil cross-deputization is dangerous not only because it puts unauthorized immigrants at risk of destitute poverty, family dissolution, and political disenfranchisement.  It also puts the rest of us on the verge of becoming active “police agents” in a country that increasingly resembles a police state to immigrants and their families.

This is not a hopeful vision.  We would do well to have a serious discussion about the host of ethical and pragmatic questions this trend raises before we continue moving down this path.

Helen B. Marrow, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Latin American Studies at Tufts University. She is winner of the 2008 Best Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association and author of New Destination Dreaming:  Immigration, Race, and Legal Status in the Rural American South (Stanford University Press, 2011)

Where do Republicans Go From Here?: Latino Outreach in a New Era of Politics

By Stephen A. Nuño, Northern Arizona University

The greatest cliché in politics today as it relates to Latinos is the notion that Latinos are Republicans; they just don’t know it yet.  Perhaps this was once true, but over the last few weeks and with this weeks findings from Latino Decisions’ most recent poll, the notion that Latinos can be Republican or that religiosity can be used as a bridge to recruit Latinos without significant changes in how the GOP approaches Latino voters seems to have been effectively dismantled.

In his American Conservative article, “Republicans and the End of White America”, Ron Unz states that the Republican Party can only be characterized as the “white Party” and past attempts by the GOP to restrict immigration into the country had more to do with mobilizing white angst against the growing number of migrants than it did about sound social and economic policy. This was a similar strategy used by the Republican Party in the South as power structures that were once dominated by whites gave way to Black political inclusion. This was a pragmatic attempt to make short-term gains at the expense of long-term benefits. Unz writes that “while the politics of polarization might be demonized in liberal intellectual circles, it served to elect vast numbers of Republicans to high and low office alike”. This is a remarkable statement. Even if many well-intentioned whites were lured by the rhetoric of egalitarianism, which provided a thin veil of liberalism to cover the obviously racially motivated results, it validates what Latinos have known all along.

Perhaps this is why the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and other organizations, started by anti-immigrant activist John Tanton, who have long maintained at least some rhetorical space between legal and illegal immigrants are no longer committed to that distinction. FAIR and other anti-immigrant groups, which Republican representatives have long used as a legitimate source for research on immigration, has been running television ads arguing that legal immigration now must be stopped. Mark Krikorian, a descendant of Armenian immigrants, argues that both legal and illegal immigration needs to be curtailed in his book, The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal.

This has created a continuous rift between the GOP and Latinos. It was thirty years ago that Ronald Reagan ran a concerted effort to recruit Latinos into the GOP, but that was dismantled throughout the anti-immigrant spasm orchestrated by Pete Wilson in the 1990’s.  President George W. Bush and Karl Rove have been wholly committed to integrating Hispanics into the GOP but the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 and the ensuing war on terror that evoked a nativist response effectively shut that possibility out.

Gary Segura of Latino Decisions has convincingly illustrated that Latinos are decidedly not Republicans, despite the cliché.  Segura’s argument is also consistent with past research by Cortina and de la Garza in which they conclude that Latinos are not Republican and know it. The question now, however, is where do the Republicans go from here?  Unfortunately, there is no easy answer.  It took three decades to create this division and it will take as long to repair it.

Aside from the obvious implications Republican recruitment has for representative democracy, research does show that the gap between the GOP and Latinos can be bridged.  However, it will take a concerted effort to do so.  Whether or not the GOP wants to commit to representing the fastest growing segment of the population by appealing to their interests is still an open question, but the research has shown that Latinos will respond if Republicans reach out to them.

In my academic article, “Latino Mobilization and Vote Choice in the 2000 Presidential Election”, I show that Hispanic recruits can have a positive impact on influencing the vote of other Latinos in favor of the GOP. In other research with Matt Barreto of Latino Decisions, we have seen a similar impact on how Latinos view partisan policies. In addition to the impact that Latino recruits have on other Latinos, Matt Barreto has shown that Latino candidates can have a similarly positive impact on Latino participation. In short, Republican efforts to bring Latinos into the fold could have the effect of bringing Latino voters into the Party.

With this in mind, Latino Decisions’ latest poll asks Hispanics if Marco Rubio, a Cuban American Republican Senator from Florida, was nominated by the GOP for Vice-President, would it have any effect on their likelihood of voting Republican.  While this had little impact on Democrats, it did have a larger impact on Independents, with 26% saying they are more likely to vote Republican.  About 30% of Hispanics between the age of 18 and 35 said so as well, perhaps because they are still too young or not yet politically conscious of the harsh rhetoric coming from the GOP over the last 30 years.

The areas for advancement have been so deteriorated by GOP rhetoric that it will take a concerted effort to make inroads, which would not only be beneficial in democratic terms, but the research has shown over and again that the country as a whole would like some sensible approach to immigration.  A more sensible approach would also seem more compelling since it has a positive impact on the electability of the candidate as well.  It would be worth the effort to finally take this issue off the table and move forward onto other issues, such as education, small business development, and fixing the economy, all issues that rank high among Latinos and non-Latinos alike.

It’s still difficult to tell how Latinos would react if the GOP systematically reached out to them. While the research shows its possible, Latinos think the GOP seems uninterested in changing old habits.  In the same survey by Latino Decisions, Hispanics were asked if the Republican Party is doing a good job of reaching out to Latinos. As reflected in the figure below, not even half of Latino Republicans say the GOP is doing a good job, and many more Latino Republicans think the GOP is either being hostile or doesn’t care too much about Latinos. Yet, less than half of Independents think the Democrats are doing a good job, as well. These are opportunities the GOP can hardly afford to squander.

While it’s easy to be melancholic about the future of the GOP’s relationship with Hispanics, candidates such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have integrated Latinos into their campaigns and their administration.  Gingrich has long employed Sylvia Garcia, his outreach director, to run his Hispanic website and Rick Perry appointed another Hispanic to an important commission in Texas earlier this year.  It’s clear that efforts to reach out to Hispanics reap positive results, as the Democrats have shown, and maybe that’s why Newt Gingrich recently hired Marco Rubio’s campaign chief to be his Florida Director. Rather than collecting endorsements, Newt seems to be putting his money where his mouth is. Perhaps its time the GOP did as well.

Stephen A. Nuño, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Northern Arizona University and a regular contributor to Latino Decisions. His research focuses on partisan outreach to Hispanic voters.

Latinos not very enthusiastic about the 2012 election

By Pilar Marrero – Pilar.marrero@laopinion.com  | 2011-12-12

Click here to download slide-deck presentation from today’s webinar

Click here to view the results from the December impreMedia/Latino Decisions poll

LOS ANGELES, CA. – The lively primary campaign for the Republican nomination, which has been in the news for months, has not generated interest among the majority of Latino voters—whose enthusiasm for participating in the 2012 presidential election has plummeted in recent months. In fact, when asked specifically how enthusiastic they are about voting, there is a decreasing trend: Only 44% of Latino voters said they are very enthusiastic about participating in next year’s U.S. presidential election, compared with 47% in October and 50% in August.

“It seems like this is in part because there’s only competition on the Republican side, but it also means Latinos in general aren’t very interested and don’t feel included in the Republicans’ conversation,” said Matt Barreto, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and advisor for Latino Decisions, a polling organization.

The poll’s Latino Republicans are more enthusiastic, for obvious reasons: 57% said they are very interested in participating. However, Latino Republicans or Latinos who are sure about or interested in voting for the GOP’s candidates in the election have never surpassed 20% in this poll.  For example, in the most recent poll, only 9% said they are certain to vote for a Republican candidate, while a total of 17% said they are certain or could vote for a Republican.

“None of the Republican candidates has awakened the interest of Latinos,” said Gabriel Sánchez, a political scientist at the University of New Mexico. “As far as Obama, his approval among Latinos has remained stable. Perhaps we’re not as enamored with him as before, but in reality what the poll showed is that his philosophy is more consistent with that of Latino voters than what they are  hearing from the GOP.” Nevertheless, this is not good news either for the re-election of President Obama, who needs an enthusiastic turnout from his base to be able to win what looks like a close race once the GOP chooses its candidate.

The impreMedia/Latino Decisions poll began measuring the election preferences of Latino voters in February of this year. It has been measuring their enthusiasm for voting in next year’s presidential election and their potential support for President Obama and a Republican rival. In six separate polls, Latino voters’ tendency to identify with the Democrats and President Obama’s approval rating among the majority of Latinos—except for Latino Republicans—have fluctuated somewhat, but have generally remained above 60%. Nevertheless, the voting intentions and enthusiasm of Latinos, which are crucial for Barack Obama’s re-election in states such as Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and even Arizona, which is now said to be up for grabs, are not as positive for the president as could be expected. “On the Democratic side, there’s no competition or much discussion. In 2008, as we remember, there was a lot of enthusiasm around the race, particularly between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama,” said Barreto.

Only 54% of Latino voters said they are certain to vote for Obama. And only 31% of Latino independents have said the same. This number has increased from 38% recorded in August and 49% in October, but it is still relatively modest: The president will probably need a supermajority (more than 75%) of the Latino vote to counteract a loss of support among other segments of the population.  “This lack of interest can be corrected later on, but for now it’s like a vacuum that can later be dangerous for the president,” said Barreto.

As far as the issues of interest for this group of voters, they have also remained the same during the past 10 months: the economy and jobs have been competing for first place with the issue of immigration reform among the majority of Latinos. The most recent poll showed a technical tie between the most important issues: 43% thought the economy and jobs are most important and 42% thought it was immigration reform. Latino Republicans are the exception; for 48% of them, the economy and jobs are the most important, while immigration reform matters most to 24%.

Barreto said, “We’re asking Latinos which is the issue they think the president and Congress should address or give priority to. Immigration and the economy have consistently been in the top two spots for almost a year.” “If Obama’s campaign is going to ignore the immigration issue and focus only on the economy, they may not be as persuasive for Latinos,” said Barreto. “If they only campaign on the economy, there’s not much to sell to Latinos, whose situation is very difficult.”

Latino Decisions/impreMedia webinar results now posted online

***RESULTS NOW POSTED BELOW***

When: Monday, December 12, 2011

What: impreMedia and Latino Decisions will be conducting a press webinar to report the results from their December national tracking poll on Latinos which focused on the role of religion and social values in the 2012 election, Latino views on Mormonism, as well as Marco Rubio as a potential VP candidate, and enthusiasm about voting in the 2012 election. Full survey results posted under ‘Recent Polls’

Slides: Click here to download slide-deck presentation

Who: Matt Barreto, Principal for Latino Decisions
Gabe Sanchez, Director of Research for Latino Decisions
Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto, Director of Communications for Latino Decisions
Jacquelynn Carrera, Marketing Manager for impreMedia

Their religion does not affect Latinos’ vote

By Pilar Marrero – Pilar.marrero@laopinion.com  | 2011-12-8

Full Results From December Poll Posted Here

LOS ANGELES, CA. – Because of the conservative philosophy of Latinos in the U.S. regarding family and religion, in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan said: “Hispanics are Republicans. They just don’t know it yet.” Today’s Republicans are still repeating this as if it were a sacrament. Nevertheless, a new poll of Latino voters by impreMedia and Latino Decisions revealed that when it comes to voting, the majority (53%) of these citizens said their own religion does not have much influence on which candidate they choose, while 40% said it does.

Although the numbers appear balanced, they become clearer when broken down: Only 23% said their religion has a “big impact,” while 17% said the candidate’s religion has a “small” impact. The only exception is among Latinos who are part of the GOP, since 47% said their religion does have a big impact on their election choices.

“It’s always been said that Latinos have a conflict between their religion and their political tendencies. That they’re usually more progressive on economic policy but conservative on social issues,” said Matt Barreto, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and advisor to Latino Decisions.

However, Barreto said the poll reflects no such conflict: “Religion and social and moral values are not among their priorities when they make their political and election calculations.”

The poll confirmed that Latino voters place little or no importance on traditional moral issues when voting: 75% think the economy, jobs and taxes are much more important in politics. Only 14% said moral or social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage or family values are more important.

Ironically, this is true for many categories of Latino voters, including Democrats, Republicans and independents; U.S. born and naturalized citizens; various socioeconomic levels; those who attend church weekly and those who are “born again.” Economic issues rule.

On the other hand, there are moral issues on which Latinos agree, and which can incidentally have an impact on their political stance—and immigration is one of them. “In this poll, there’s a clear moral attitude of support regarding churches and religious leaders helping undocumented immigrants even if it’s in conflict with the law,” said Ricardo Ramírez, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame. “For them, helping the undocumented is a moral issue and could even be a religious one.”

A majority (66%) of Latino voters think churches should support the undocumented even if it challenges laws, and only 21% think they should not help them. Naturalized Latino citizens tend to have stronger positions on this: 75% said the church should help. Among U.S. born Latinos, this support is lower, at 58%. But even 66% of Republican Latinos and 66% of independents have this opinion. In general, these voters tend to want their churches and election politics to remain very separate: overwhelming majorities of these voters think no religious leader, minister or rabbi should tell them which candidate to vote for.

The President’s Religion and Mormons

When asked about the religions of President Obama and one of his main Republican rivals, Mitt Romney, many of these voters had no idea which religion either one of them belongs to: 48% said they did not know the president’s religion and 58% said the same about Romney. “At this point, Latinos don’t seem to be very interested in the religion of these candidates,” said Barreto.

Interestingly, 12% of Latinos said Obama is a Muslim, and only 25% correctly said Romney is a Mormon or belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Something else the poll revealed is that Latino voters have a very vague idea of what Mormonism is. This issue will probably be relevant during the general election if Romney is the GOP’s candidate, although this is yet to be determined. Of respondents, 58% are not familiar with Mormonism, 13% are very familiar and 27% are somewhat familiar.  About 40% said, incorrectly, that Mormonism is not a Christian religion and only 31% said that it is—while 27% said they do not know.

Although religion does not seem to have a positive effect on Latinos’ vote, it is not clear whether it might have a negative effect on Latino Republican or independent voters.

“Apparently, Mormonism is not defined in the minds of these voters. This could be good or bad for the Republican candidate if it’s Romney, because this issue will surely come up in the race,” said Michael Jones-Correa, a professor of government at Cornell University. “If there’s more definition of what the Mormon religion is, it could be more beneficial or detrimental for Romney; it depends.”

Latino Decisions and impreMedia to release new poll on Religion and Politics

Latino Decisions and impreMedia will be releasing data from a new survey focused on the Latino electorate’s attitudes regarding the role of religion in politics on Thursday, December 8, 2011. The December survey is the sixth and final monthly tracking poll in 2011. impreMedia is the leading Hispanic News and Information Company in the U.S. in Online and Print. impreMedia’s multi-platform offerings range from Online to Video, Social Media, Mobile, Audio, Newspapers and Magazines, including the www.impre.com portal. 25.5% of all U.S. Hispanic adults use an impreMedia network product. Its leading publications include La Opinión in Los Angeles and El Diario in New York.

 The Latino Decisions Tracking Poll was launched in 2010 during the midterm election and is the only on-going political tracking poll of Latino registered voters in the nation. In partnership with impreMedia, the poll focused on Latino voters’ assessment of the new Congress, the President and the most important issues leading up to the 2012 presidential election.

 Religion has been a major factor during the Republican primary election, as it was during the 2008 presidential race. Given the contention by some that the conservative attitudes of the Latino population toward social issues could lead to greater success in Latino outreach for the GOP, it is an ideal time to assess the attitudes of Latinos toward religion and politics.

An extensive list of religion and politics questions were fielded, and among the results to be released on Thursday are:

_When thinking about who to vote for in next year’s election, how much will your religious beliefs shape your vote? Would you say they will have a big impact, a small impact, or no effect at all on who you will vote for?

_ How important is it that a candidate shares your same religious beliefs in deciding whether or not you will vote for them? Would you say that a candidate’s belief will have a big impact, a small impact, or no effect on who you will vote for?

_How familiar would you say you are with the religious beliefs of the Mormon faith, also called the “Latter-Day Saints Church”? Would you say you are very familiar, somewhat familiar, not very familiar, or not at all familiar with Mormonism?

_How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statement: It is a good thing when religious leaders–priests, ministers, preachers, and rabbis–tell their members which candidate they should vote for.

_Now we would like to know your reaction to different statements. After I read each pair of statements, please tell me which comes closest to your way of thinking. Okay, the first two statements are:

1) Politics is more about economic issues such as jobs, taxes, gas prices, and the minimum wage. OR

2) Politics is more about moral issues such as abortion, family values, and same-sex marriage.

Okay, the next two statements are:

1) Churches or religious leaders should provide assistance to undocumented immigrants even if providing such help is against the law in some states. OR.

 2) Churches have a responsibility to follow the law, so they should not provide assistance to undocumented immigrants.

Can the Internet be a Door to Increased Latin@ and African American Participation?

By Jessica Lavariega Monforti & Jose Marichal

Could the key to increasing civic engagement among Latinos and African Americans be computer classes?   A growing body of research is linking Internet use, particularly social network use, and increased social capital and civic engagement.  A new report from the MaCarthur foundation finds that Facebook use is correlated with increased interest in and participation in politics. Scholars like Northwestern Sociologist Esther Hargatti speak eloquently about the information gap between rich and poor online.  This gap is less about access to technology and more about developing the skills to harness the technology for political and social gain.  The ability to do information searches, send text messages, tweet, share content and other on-line skills is a central element in becoming what Evegny Morozov calls a “digital renegade” rather than a “digital captive.”

The key to using the Web in democracy-enhancing ways is acquiring digital skills.  While this concept has been measured in lots of ways, the presence of digital skills can be measured by the level of autonomy the user has, the number of access points a user has to get online, the amount of experience a user has with different types of online tools, etc.

While the transformation of political life through the Web has not proceeded apace, events like Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 U.S. presidential election highlight the power of the Internet and particularly social networking sites as a mobilizing and fund-raising tool.

Latinos might be particularly disposed to use the Web in ways that cultivate the development of digital skills.  Because Latinos are younger than the population as a whole, they are more likely to be digital natives that can use the Web to accomplish democracy-enhancing tasks like texting, social networking and uploading content. In addition, a 2008 study by Forrester Research found that forty percent of Latinos used the Web for content creation and sharing (blog, upload video and photos, create web-pages, etc.).  By comparison, only 12 percent on non-Latinos used the Internet for these purposes. Finally, as reflected in the table below, a study conducted last year by the Pew Center found that Latinos were more than three times as likely as whites to use Twitter (19% for Latinos to 5% for whites).

Let’s be humane: Republican rhetoric on immigration reform and voter opinion

Stephen A. Nuño, Northern Arizona University

“I don’t see how the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families which have been here a quarter-century. I’m prepared to take the heat for saying let’s be humane in enforcing the law.” – Newt Gingrich, 11/22/2011

The immigration issue has been a lightning rod in politics over the last decade, however it is largely reflective of our country’s historical love-hate relationship with our newest members of society. The 2010 Census illustrates the growth of the Hispanic population in the United States in several ways that will quickly have an important impact on the political landscape. More than 25% of the Hispanic population is under five years old, and Hispanics make up 22% of the U.S. population under-18 years old.

Texas is now a majority-minority state, meaning ethnic minorities make up the majority of the population in a state that is worth thirty-eight electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win a Presidential election. This is important because if the GOP loses Texas it will be virtually impossible to win another presidential election. The recent federal court decision to draw three out of four new Congressional districts in Texas where minorities will make up the majority population underscores the need to come up with a plan to integrate Latinos into the GOP. There simply are not enough non-Hispanic whites in the South and the upper-Midwest to make a presidential election close.

Hispanics are also making political headway in places where they were previously non-existent. Recently, the former Senate President of Arizona, Russell Pearce, became the first elected representative in his position to be successfully recalled. The self-declared representative of the Tea Party took up the mantle against immigrants with the infamous SB1070 as well as a set of anti-immigrant proposals, which failed to pass, that would even make Alabama blush. Russell Pearce found himself in a district that is now 30% Hispanic and with a dominant Mormon community that is coming under increasing pressure from the Church to moderate their stance on immigration, lest they offend the fastest growing source of recruits to increase the flock in the country.

Latinos, Skin Tone and Inter-Group Attitudes

By Betina C. Wilkinson, Wake Forest University

The Latino population in the U.S. differs in many ways- by national origin, socioeconomic status, native status, political ideology, and even skin tone.  A recent Latino Decisions post by Gabriel Sanchez sheds light on another way that Latinos differentiate from each another: racial identification.  More Latinos today are identifying as white racially, providing restored growth to the white population in a time where this may not be completely apparent.   However, given that the census declares that Hispanic is not a race but an ethnicity, what influences Latinos to identify as white?  Is it socioeconomic status and a sense of belonging as referred to in the aforementioned Latino Decisions post?  Or can Latinos’ own skin tone impact their racial identification?

Skin tone differences among Latinos and its implications have been relatively untapped in the racial and ethnic politics literature.  Furthermore, only recently have national surveys included questions about Latinos’ own perceptions of their skin tone.  Examining individual self-perceptions is inherently different from exploring individuals’ actual skin tone.  Nevertheless, studying individuals’ perceptions increases our understanding of the social desirability factors that influence how individuals perceive themselves and others (see Breland (1998) and Hochschild and Weaver, 2007)).

Using the 2005-2006 Latino National survey data, the figure below depicts Latinos’ self-perception of skin tone on a scale from 0 (very dark) to 4 (very light).  As reflected in the figure, a majority of Latinos perceive their skin tone as not very dark nor as very light but somewhere in between, though a substantial number classify themselves as light and very light-skinned.

Potential Latino VP Candidates Largely Unknown by Voters

One of the back stories of the GOP primary is whether any of the candidates vying to represent the Republican Party and challenge President Obama in 2012 can mobilize support among the Latino electorate. Given that Latinos are not likely to have a large impact on the outcome of the Republican primary, much of this discussion revolves around the question of whether the highly conservative stance of the Republican contenders on immigration policy will cost the GOP Latino votes in the general election? Given that the GOP candidates do not resonate well  with Latino voters, it may take a game-changing event to see any of the contenders for the Republican nomination secure a meaningful percentage of the Latino vote in 2012. One potential strategy for making in-roads with the Latino electorate is to place a Latino on the ticket as a Vice Presidential candidate.  But would having a Latino on the ticket actually help secure more of the Latino vote?

Through analysis of the favorability measures in the November Univision News/Latino Decisions survey for the two potential Latino GOP prospects, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, we can assess this important question. With the ability to compare the attitudes of Latino likely voters to the attitudes of non-Hispanic white likely voters, the November poll provides the ability to determine if Latino voters are more favorable toward Martinez and Rubio than non-Latino voters.

As reflected in the figure below, New Mexico’s Republican Governor Susana Martinez is not well known among the general voting population, as nearly half of the sample indicates that they have “never heard of” her, with another 30% indicating that they do not know enough about her yet to have an opinion. Furthermore, although slightly more Latinos view Governor Martinez favorably when compared to the full sample, a robust 38% have “never heard of” the first Latina to be elected governor in U.S. history.  Latino voters in the Southwest are more familiar with Martinez, 34% of Latinos in this region have “never heard” of her, and 23% are either “very” or “somewhat” favorable of the Governor from New Mexico. These data suggest that Susana Martinez does not have the name recognition, at least at this point, to mobilize Latino voters if chosen as the GOP Vice Presidential candidate.

Results From New Univision News/Latino Decisions Survey

A new Univision News/Latino Decisions poll conducted between October 21^st and November 1^st, 2011 provides the opportunity to gauge the candidate and policy preferences of the national electorate leading up to the 2012 presidential election. With national samples of both the Latino and overall electorates, this survey allows  for comparisons to be made between the political attitudes of Latino registered voters and the more general electorate. This initial release of the survey results focuses largely on the Republican presidential primary race, with questions focused on favorability toward the contenders for the GOP nomination, and items focused on how the front-runners would fare against each other and President Obama if the election were held now.

Please click on the following links if you would like to access the full results for both samples, as well as the slides from our webcast presentation conducted in partnership with Univision News:

National Sample Toplines

Latino Electorate Sample Toplines

Webinar Slides

The table below provides results from a question in the survey that asked respondents who they would support if the Republican primary election were being held today. The table provides results for the full and Latino samples, with a breakout of Republican identifiers within each sample. Herman Cain emerges as the leader within the full sample, capturing 23% of all registered voters, and 24% of those who identify as Republican. The poll was conducted prior to a fourth woman emerging with specific allegations of sexual harassment against Cain, so it is likely that his support has dropped as a result of this recent development.  Mitt Romney comes in second among all voters, trailing Cain by 5% among Republican voters and registered voters more generally. While Rick Perry is within range of the two leaders, with 10% support among all voters, none of the other candidates reaches double-digit support from voters at this point in the race.

Turning our attention to the Latino sample, we see that Mitt Romney has more support from Latino registered voters, particularly Latino Republicans, relative to Cain and Perry.   Furthermore, a large segment of the Latino electorate indicate that they are undecided on who they prefer among these candidates, which has resulted in lower overall support levels for the front-runners at this point in the campaign.

If the Republican primary election were being held today, who would you vote for?

The survey also includes a favorability battery for the President and all of the major contenders for the GOP nomination. We again display results for both the full and Latino samples. As we see in the table below, President Obama has much higher approval ratings among Latino registered voters than he does from the general public- 70% favorability among Latinos compared to only 53% in the general public. There is also a much larger gap in favorability between the President and all of the GOP candidates among Latinos than we see in the full sample. For example, while President Obama enjoys a nearly 50 percentage point favorability advantage over all Republican contenders, there is only a 14 point gap between President Obama and the most favorable GOP candidates (Cain and Romney) among the general voting population.

Another major finding from the survey is the lack of general familiarity with the Republican presidential candidates among the Latino electorate. Even if we isolate the three front-runners, a robust 35% of Latino registered voters had “never heard of” Herman Cain at the time of the survey, 25% “never heard of” Mitt Romney, and 19% “never heard of” Rick Perry.  These data strongly suggest that the Republican party has a great challenge facing them if they hope to secure a significant segment of the Latino vote in 2012, as a large portion of Latino registered voters do not know their candidates at this stage in the primary election.

Now I’d like to ask you about some people who have been mentioned in the news recently. For each, please tell me whether you have heard of the person, and if your impression is favorable or unfavorable. How about………?

The survey also provides a direct test of how the leading GOP contenders would fare against the President if the election were to be held today.  We again display results for both the full and Latino specific samples. As we see in the figure below, Herman Cain appears  to be the greatest opposition to President Obama at this point in the election, with the President only having a 6% lead on Cain with 7% of respondents still undecided. This of course could change dramatically in our next poll given the recent developments in the sexual harassment allegations facing Herman Cain. President Obama enjoys a more comfortable advantage at this point if either Rick Perry or Mitt Romney were to emerge as the GOP nominee, with nearly identical outcomes in these two scenarios within the general voting population.

Finally, we see that the lack of familiarity with the GOP candidates among Latino voters has the President capturing a much larger segment of the Latino electorate than the general electorate. As depicted in the figure below, if “the election were today”, President Obama is projected to secure roughly the same percentage of the Latino vote in 2012 as he did in 2008 – regardless of who represents the Republican Party.

While these early forecasts bode well for President Obama’s chances of securing a second term, it is important to note that our survey also indicates that a robust 53% of Latino registered voters are “less excited about President Obama and his accomplishments” after his first three years in office, and 48% were more “excited about voting” back in 2008 than they are about voting in 2012. Consequently, this enthusiasm gap among Latino voters could result in a drop in Latino turnout in 2012, which could be just as damaging to the President’s likelihood of winning a second term as a movement toward the Republican Party.

Gabriel R. Sanchez is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico and Research Director for Latino Decisions.