Way back in March, the Wall Street Journal ran an item about the White House’s aggressive new strategy to win over Hispanic voters nationwide. Bush knew he didn’t have to actually win the Latino Vote in November, but if he could close the gap considerably, his chances for a second term would greatly improve.
All signs suggested the initiative was an immediate flop. The Democracy Corps conducted a poll after Bush’s plan was unveiled and it showed Hispanic voters rejecting Bush and the GOP in general by wide margins.
Ruy Teixeira, at the time, said the Republican outreach strategy was in “shambles.”
Their clever strategy of targeting Hispanic voters has run into a fairly major problem. The current Republican Party (aka the white people’s party) just doesn’t have a lot to offer an overwhelmingly working class, immigrant-based, minority population like Hispanics. “We’re socially conservative, too” or “Some of us speak Spanish” just doesn’t cut it with a group whose real-life needs call for more government action, not less.
Several months have passed, but a new poll shows the same results: the Latino community has rejected Bush.
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) holds a strong lead over President Bush among the nation’s Hispanic voters, with a majority rejecting the president’s handling of the economy and the war in Iraq, according to a survey by The Washington Post, Univision and the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute.
Though estimates vary, Bush won between 30% and 35% of the Latino vote in 2000. It was better than Bob Dole’s unimpressive 21% in 1996, but Bush advisors hoped to boost his standing this year to stave off Kerry’s challenge. Yet, as of now, Bush appears to have lost support among Hispanic voters over the last four years.
The Post/Univision poll showed Kerry leading Bush among Hispanic voters by a two-to-one margin, 60% to 30%. The Latino community also prefers Kerry over Bush in every area of public policy — the campaign against terrorism (43-35), the “situation” in Iraq (45-34), the economy (53-28), education (51-27), and immigration issues (46-26).
It’s also worth noting that while this is going to be an important factor in the 2004 election, partisan ID trends in the Latino community are likely to be just as significant in the future.
Competition for Hispanic voters remains fierce. Latinos now outnumber blacks, rank as the fastest-growing minority group in the country and are less solidly attached to the Democratic Party than are blacks. The 2000 census counted more than 35 million Hispanics in the United States, a 50 percent increase in one decade.
Three-quarters of all Latinos live in high-growth western and southern states, and their political influence has grown with their numbers. Although their clout has been muted by low rates of turnout, the number of Hispanics who voted in 2000 represented a 20 percent increase over 1996 and they accounted for about 5 percent of the overall electorate.
If Dems can continue to solidify support among Hispanic voters for years to come, the party will have added a key constituency to its fold. One might even call the Latino community an integral part of an emerging democratic majority….