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You are here: Home / Politics / What can brown do for you?

What can brown do for you?

by DougJ|  March 23, 20114:57 pm| 101 Comments

This post is in: Politics

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Steve M. finds a key figure in Obama’s re-elect numbers: 66% of Latino voters say they are likely to vote for him, only 16% say they’d vote for a Republican. Overall, 47% say they’d vote for him, 37% say they’d vote for a Republican (these kinds of polls have huge numbers of undecideds). Obama won the election by seven points, so his “lead” here is slightly larger than it was in the 2008 election results. When you go through the figures you see what’s mostly going on: he does almost exactly the same among all groups (losing the white vote by 11, he lost it by 12 in 2008, for example), except for a 14 point increase among Latinos.

One caveat here: the overall sample was only 1500 people, so the number of Latinos in it was small enough that the margin of error is large. Still, this is a striking finding and it shows why Democrats will continue to have big advantages in presidential elections (where the proportion of non-white voters is elevated, relative to midterms) until the Republicans figure out how to appeal to Latino voters.

Personally, I don’t think Marco Rubio could do this all by himself, but if Republicans lose a reasonably tight presidential election in which they lose the Latino vote by 40 plus points, I’m sure they’ll take a good hard look at him in 2016.

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Reader Interactions

101Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    March 23, 2011 at 5:00 pm

    The GOP can’t appeal to Latino voters without hopelessly alienating their base of racist white fucks.

    So they’re screwed.

  2. 2.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 23, 2011 at 5:02 pm

    Personally, I don’t think Marco Rubio could do this all by himself, but if Republicans if lose a reasonably tight presidential election in which they lose the Latino vote by 40 plus points, I’m sure they’ll take a good hard look at him in 2016.

    They would have to figure out an immigration policy that satisfies the yahoos and attracts Latinos. How would they do that?

  3. 3.

    Zifnab

    March 23, 2011 at 5:05 pm

    Still, this is a striking finding and it shows why Democrats will continue to have big advantages in presidential elections (where the proportion of non-white voters is elevated, relative to midterms) until the Republicans figure out how to appeal to Latino voters suppress Latino voter turnout.

    Disenfranchisement is a cottage industry in the South. Once we start getting more of those Voting Card laws into place and throwing up more and more hurdles to access the ballot box, red states will get even more unassailable.

    Republicans have had a history of playing meaner and dirtier when faced with more aggressive competition. In the deep south, I don’t know whether losing the Latino vote will hurt so much if the white guys running the show can keep pushing them around.

  4. 4.

    Tractarian

    March 23, 2011 at 5:06 pm

    Title WIN!

  5. 5.

    Superluminar

    March 23, 2011 at 5:06 pm

    Conservative memetic selection for FAIL is WAI, or something.

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    March 23, 2011 at 5:08 pm

    They would have to figure out an immigration policy that satisfies the yahoos and attracts Latinos. How would they do that?

    They also have to dance around the question of how to deal with the issue of the employment of vast numbers of mostly undocumented Latinos? As in, do you punish the victims, or the Ferengi assholes who hire them? Who also finance the GOP in the first place?

    Arizona’s answer is go after the brown people (without regard of their citizenship, or their legal work status), not the white people who create the conditions that attract them. Which appeals to the yahoos, not the Latinos.

    Like I said, they’re screwed.

  7. 7.

    Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)

    March 23, 2011 at 5:09 pm

    What you’re missing here is that if you throw out the black voters and Hispanic voters, Obama’s in deep, deep trouble. But you’re just an O-bot who’s in the tank for a Kenyan-born nazi Marxist atheist Muslim, so no wonder you hid the evidence.

    But seriously… I wonder if that “If you disregard the black voters…” crap has fallen by the wayside with Obama’s election. Seems like there was a lot of that shit back when Bush was president, as conservatives tried desperately to “prove” that they were better liked than the Democrats by only counting the “real” voters, the “real” Americans. But I can’t think that I’ve seen any of that shit lately…

  8. 8.

    Bob Loblaw

    March 23, 2011 at 5:09 pm

    You’re really riding the Steve M. bandwagon hard right now, DougJ. Heck, maybe he should just write for this site and cut out the middleman.

    Also, I’m still not clear on why it is that Latinos have such a low turnout year after year. Sometimes I wonder if Democrats even really want them as part of their coalition at all, or if they’re just falling ass-backwards into it by default due to GOP racism. It seems to me a massive turnout operation in Texas alone would be the savviest business move the DNC has made in decades.

  9. 9.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    March 23, 2011 at 5:09 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est: Nice thought. The problem is that the racist fucks will vote Republican anyway, in part because the Republicans can appeal to the Conservative Christian values in some Latinos and still play dog whistle with the whites.

    Just remember, the only reason the GOP is losing Hispanics is that they are trying to actually pass laws. I worry that as soon as they stop trying/being able to pass these laws some Hispanics will return. It’s not like the rest of America learns their lesson.

  10. 10.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    March 23, 2011 at 5:10 pm

    .
    .
    It matters not what President Obama does or does not do – the only thing that matters is that he be re-elected to the office of President of the United States of America.
    .
    .

  11. 11.

    Sentient Puddle

    March 23, 2011 at 5:11 pm

    Usual caveat when talking about Latinos still applies: they’re not as homogenous as pollsters want us to think. Latinos in Florida, for instance, are likely Cuban, and are more likely to support Republicans than, say, a Latino from the southwest.

    If there’s going to be a Republican renaissance among Latinos, it’s more likely to come from someone like Susana Martinez than Marco Rubio.

  12. 12.

    Comrade DougJ

    March 23, 2011 at 5:11 pm

    @Bob Loblaw:

    If I ever take a break, I plan to ask him to guest blog here.

  13. 13.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 23, 2011 at 5:11 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est: My question was meant to be rhetorical. Great minds…

  14. 14.

    Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)

    March 23, 2011 at 5:12 pm

    @Uncle Clarence Thomas:

    ¿Qué? ¿Huh? In the immortal words of Bill Murray, in Groundhog Day: ¿What the hell?

  15. 15.

    Caz

    March 23, 2011 at 5:14 pm

    What does everyone think the reason for the following is:

    1. That 60% or whatever of latinos support Obama.
    2. That 90% of blacks support Obama.

    Am I missing something? Has he addressed any race issues? Or maybe they think he is the best chance for addressing them in the next 6 years since he has a vested interest.

    You don’t see these racial lines drawn when it comes to white candidates or politicians. White are evenly split between democrats and republicans, Gingrich and Obama, etc.

    What gives? It’s a serious question. Are they voting purely on race? That seems a little too simplistic to be true, but the data seems to support that. Not that I would blame African-Americans for supporting the first African-American president in history!

    I’m Sicilian, but I lived in NYC in 1905, I’d probably be on board with candidate Carlo Pastafazulo just because he’s “my people” and “my people” need representation. Seems logical. Is it really that simple? What do y’all think?

  16. 16.

    Comrade DougJ

    March 23, 2011 at 5:17 pm

    @Caz:

    It’s because they know Republicans hate them and are out to get them.

  17. 17.

    Bob Loblaw

    March 23, 2011 at 5:18 pm

    @Caz:

    Republican troll is Republican. But not the interesting type. Disappointing.

  18. 18.

    Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)

    March 23, 2011 at 5:19 pm

    @Caz:

    Are you serious? I think it’s more that Obama’s a Democrat than that he’s a black guy. There’s still a lot of racism in this country, even though it’s far more hidden and subtle than it was before the Civil Rights laws of the 60’s, and even I, a fairly lucky and clueless white guy, can pick up on it, some of it, at least. You can be damned sure minorities see it a lot more clearly than I can, and they know which party is wallowing in racist shit up to its ears.

  19. 19.

    Superluminar

    March 23, 2011 at 5:22 pm

    @Caz
    I suspect the fact that Republicans are racist fucks might answer your in-no-way-concern-trolling-question.

  20. 20.

    Butler

    March 23, 2011 at 5:22 pm

    What does everyone think the reason for the following is:

    1. That 60% or whatever of latinos support Obama.
    2. That 90% of blacks support Obama.

    To your second point, he gets 90% not because of his race but because he’s a Democrat.

    Kerry got 90% of the black vote. So did Gore. I couldn’t swear about Clinton because I haven’t seen the numbers, but I would bet that he got at least that high, especially in 1996. Obama did do a little bit better among black voters in 2008, but it was a marginal improvement, something like 93% compared to 90% for Kerry, and at the same time he also did better than Kerry among pretty much every demographic group.

    As to Latinos, its a similar phenomenon, but not as cut and dry. I suspect a lot of it is Democratic identification, while at the same time Latino’s also see how Republicans are acting towards them and see that he’s the better bet. For example, it was Republicans who wrote, passed and defended Arizona 1070, and it was Obama who opposed it.

  21. 21.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 23, 2011 at 5:23 pm

    @Caz:

    Am I missing something?

    Yes.

  22. 22.

    David in NY

    March 23, 2011 at 5:25 pm

    My experience in Brooklyn makes me doubt the viability of Rubio, particularly among Hispanics. Rubio is Cuban. Most Hispanics are not. In my part of Brooklyn, full of immigrants from all parts of the Caribbean, voting is not necessarily on a pan-Caribbean basis, but is split sharply among Haitians, Jamaicans, Barbadians, etc., etc., etc. That is, being from one island does not assure the allegiance of people from any other. So even should Rubio be able to overcome the anti-brown faction, the TP’ers, in the Republican party primary, it may not do him much good in the general.

    Ed.: And yes, as somebody pointed out above, whoever the R nominee is, to win the general he’ll have to find an immigration policy satisfactory to the yahoos and more Hispanics. Fat chance.

  23. 23.

    Butler

    March 23, 2011 at 5:25 pm

    For some reason I can’t edit my comment, I meant to quote Caz. Though now I see the whole thing was likely a waste of effort.

  24. 24.

    General Stuck

    March 23, 2011 at 5:26 pm

    I would like to see a larger number of Latinos polled, but it is a good sign, that even this early so many of those voters are turning away from any chance of voting GOP in 2012. I believe it was Rove and company that calculated the GOP could not win the WH with less than 40 percent of the Latino vote.

    The tea party is the dems best recruiter these days, and they are even more purity minded than their left wing counterparts. And are much more prominent in the power zones of gooper politics. I figure by 2016, or before, they will have alienated every voting bloc except white male conservative. They are not so much building a electoral movement for the future, but rather forming divisions of true believers. The old guard wingnut is just along for the ride.

  25. 25.

    Butler

    March 23, 2011 at 5:28 pm

    @David in NY:

    Adding to that, Cubans are one of, if not the, most Republican of all Latino groups, and my understanding is its all about Castro and how badly we can treat him. Most other latinos don’t seem to care about that.

  26. 26.

    David in NY

    March 23, 2011 at 5:29 pm

    My real question — why isn’t Obama doing even better among women?

  27. 27.

    David in NY

    March 23, 2011 at 5:31 pm

    @Butler: And I think (though I may be wrong), a lot of other Hispanics think Cubans are snotty. Rich folk, just waiting to reclaim their property after the counter-revolution.

  28. 28.

    FlipYrWhig

    March 23, 2011 at 5:31 pm

    @Bob Loblaw:

    I’m still not clear on why it is that Latinos have such a low turnout year after year.

    Wild-ass guess here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Latinos really had come to the conclusion that, since neither party does very much to advance their interests, they might as well not even bother voting. (There’s a bloc of lefter-than-Democrats who always talk about feeling the same way.) But then, when one party goes out of its way to _harm_ Latino interests, it galvanizes them out of their true ambivalence and into joining the other camp. Sound plausible?

  29. 29.

    patrick II

    March 23, 2011 at 5:32 pm

    I don’t think Marco Rubio could do this all by himself, but if Republicans lose a reasonably tight presidential election in which they lose the Latino vote by 40 plus points, I’m sure they’ll take a good hard look at him in 2016.

    Who do you mean by “they”? The Republican party leadership? Sure. The chiristian/white right wing of the party that votes in primaries? I don’t think so. Race runs too deep with them.

  30. 30.

    gex

    March 23, 2011 at 5:33 pm

    @Sentient Puddle: You do realize you named a female right? Yeah, that will play well with the old white dudes.

  31. 31.

    Comrade DougJ

    March 23, 2011 at 5:34 pm

    @David in NY:

    He’s doing 19 points better among women than among men. That’s pretty typical for a Democrat.

  32. 32.

    OzoneR

    March 23, 2011 at 5:34 pm

    @Caz:

    Has he addressed any race issues?

    Suing to stop Arizona’s “Driving while Hispanic” law is something he’s done for race issues.

  33. 33.

    FlipYrWhig

    March 23, 2011 at 5:35 pm

    @General Stuck: Do you think Republican bigwigs will eventually triangulate against the “Tea Party” themselves?

  34. 34.

    FlipYrWhig

    March 23, 2011 at 5:36 pm

    @patrick II: But Republicans love tokens too, because it helps them to insist that they’re not The Real Racists.

  35. 35.

    Mark S.

    March 23, 2011 at 5:37 pm

    I like how 1% of blacks surveyed prefer a GOP candidate. I also like how the MSM doesn’t like to address this topic.

  36. 36.

    gex

    March 23, 2011 at 5:37 pm

    @David in NY: I’m guessing the “family values” shtick works on some. There are way too many women on the right who buy into the subservient to their man crap. Then you get the ones swayed by the abortion issue, although why that would work on women is anyone’s guess.

  37. 37.

    OzoneR

    March 23, 2011 at 5:37 pm

    @David in NY:

    why isn’t Obama doing even better among women?

    +16 is pretty remarkable among women

  38. 38.

    Cris

    March 23, 2011 at 5:38 pm

    until the Republicans figure out how to appeal to Latino voters.

    It’s been frequently remarked on this site that if not for the racist bugfuckery (notably, but not limited to, immigration policy), Latinos would be a natural GOP constituency. It’s an interesting argument on its merits, and I’m not sure which side persuades me more, but it’s ultimately academic because it depends on a pretty huge conditional — “if the Republicans stopped being racist assholes…”

    I don’t see that simply running a Republican of the appropriate heritage, like Marc Rubio or Susana Martinez, is going to be any more effective at winning a constituency than Michael Steele was. The GOP’s approach to diversity is stalled out at tokenism.

  39. 39.

    David in NY

    March 23, 2011 at 5:39 pm

    @Comrade DougJ: True. But I sort of wondered why he could barely clear 51% with women, though. And isn’t it only a 16% spread?

    I’d expect something closer to the Asian spread, but I guess there’s a lot of midwestern white ladies, or something. Maybe this is just normal.

  40. 40.

    gnomedad

    March 23, 2011 at 5:39 pm

    Up next: Ann Coulter explains why only white people should be allowed to vote.

  41. 41.

    gex

    March 23, 2011 at 5:39 pm

    @FlipYrWhig: Now that would be fun, seeing as how they trained them to have a take no prisoners, compromise is for losers approach. The GOP has really played themselves into a dead end on this. (I hope)

  42. 42.

    Jeffro

    March 23, 2011 at 5:41 pm

    @Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):

    Duncan’s right: blacks don’t vote Obama in any higher proportions than they vote Democrat. Caz fail.

  43. 43.

    Comrade DougJ

    March 23, 2011 at 5:42 pm

    @David in NY:

    He loses men by 3.

    Nineteen is actually on the high side for a gender spread but not by much. There was a 12 point one in 2008.

  44. 44.

    Cris

    March 23, 2011 at 5:44 pm

    @Butler: Adding to that, Cubans are one of, if not the, most Republican of all Latino groups, and my understanding is its all about Castro and how badly we can treat him.

    My understanding was that while it is indeed about Castro, it’s more about how badly we have failed to assassinate him. A large and vocal portion of Cuban-Americans were refugees from the revolution, so a hard-line stance against Castro became the litmus test.

  45. 45.

    gex

    March 23, 2011 at 5:45 pm

    @Comrade DougJ: There has been a lot of anti-abortion/anti-contraception activity since 2008. Plus a new irritating trend of states wanting to equate miscarriages with manslaughter. It’s as though they think they can do it all with only old white men.

  46. 46.

    Zach

    March 23, 2011 at 5:45 pm

    Don’t forget that 2008-vintage McCain still had a pretty broad appeal with Latinos. And also that his home-state advantage in Arizona boosted numbers a little bit. Unless the GOP conspires to not have questions about immigration at its debates, any candidate emerging from the primaries will be less popular with Latinos than McCain who’s not Rubio.

    Without his sizable Latino support, McCain loses Texas and Arizona and gets clobbered in Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, and Nevada instead of losing by a fairly narrow margin.

  47. 47.

    General Stuck

    March 23, 2011 at 5:45 pm

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Do you think Republican bigwigs will eventually triangulate against the “Tea Party” themselves?

    There are signs of that in the House, with the old guard taking away the gas cans and matches from the tea tards. I think the tea party is experiencing the apex of their power right now, and it will begin to contract into a mostly southern geographical entity. But they will still hold some cards in the gooper camp, but there is a limit to how far ordinary wingers will go, and this will create a lot of tension for awhile, and the GOP will not be able to count on much boost from them in a general election. But in the meantime, they are the Johnny Appleseeds of dem recruitment with the tones of nativism and echoes of white supremacy. And general mean spirited assholishness.

    It is like a mini surge of the southern strategy, or a last gasp maybe, in a more distilled and toxic solution for the wingers. But it is all they have right now. I am optimistic right now for 2012, so long as there is some recovery for the economy. The tea partiers are waking up all sorts of sleeping dem giants.

  48. 48.

    cat48

    March 23, 2011 at 5:46 pm

    There’s a lengthly Republican poll taken to see what they would have to do to appeal to Hispanics. There really wasn’t a lot they offered that appealed to them. It was done in CA and the numbers were high for the Dems, just like the ones in this poll.

  49. 49.

    Comrade DougJ

    March 23, 2011 at 5:46 pm

    @Cris:

    It’s been frequently remarked on this site that if not for the racist bugfuckery (notably, but not limited to, immigration policy), Latinos would be a natural GOP constituency.

    I’m never sure I buy that. People say blacks might vote Republican because they supposedly hate teh gay and so on. But the truth is black people are just more likely to side with the poor and with workers than white people are, in general, and that makes them actual liberals by and large. I suspect it’s the same with Latinos.

  50. 50.

    cleek

    March 23, 2011 at 5:48 pm

    one other caveat: the election isn’t for another 18 months.

  51. 51.

    Cris

    March 23, 2011 at 5:50 pm

    @cleek: in Village, it is always election day

  52. 52.

    Dr Dave

    March 23, 2011 at 5:51 pm

    @David in NY: There may also be another conflated demographic here, namely age. Women tend to live longer than men, and older voters, whether female or male, tend to skew toward the R side. My almost 90-year-old Midwestern mom and her sister, bless them, don’t fall into this category, but there are an awful lot of WASP retirees among their peers in Florida and elsewhere who would probably never vote for one of “those” people, for whatever imaginary reason.

    Also, too, the difference between women and men is sizable, so the fact that Obama manages to win a majority among all women is pretty significant.

  53. 53.

    Jeffro

    March 23, 2011 at 5:51 pm

    @General Stuck:

    I believe it was Rove and company that calculated the GOP could not win the WH with less than 40 percent of the Latino vote.

    Yup – that’s why the Arizona stuff drives him (Rove) nuts. It’s just so blatant, and it really does kill any hope of them regaining the WH.

  54. 54.

    Garrigus Carraig

    March 23, 2011 at 5:51 pm

    Um. ¡¿Isn’t the obvious winning Latino GOP candidate P. Bush?!

  55. 55.

    FlipYrWhig

    March 23, 2011 at 5:55 pm

    @gex: Yeah, I was trying to imagine it… there’s clearly a concerted effort in the pundit class to push the “reasonable” Republicans like Daniels, and the non-Bible-thumpers like Christie. But I have a hard time seeing how such a candidate could consolidate “the base.” Really, when you think about it, Gee Dubya was the Republican dream candidate, with his ability to bind the religious, the resentful, and the big money. If they could run Dubya every 4 years, they’d always be close and often win. But who’s the next one? Rubio’s the one I have my eye warily on.

  56. 56.

    Citizen_X

    March 23, 2011 at 5:56 pm

    @Bob Loblaw:

    or if they’re just falling ass-backwards into it by default due to GOP racism

    Bingo.

    It seems to me a massive turnout operation in Texas alone would be the savviest business move the DNC has made in decades.

    Yes, but that would require Texas Dems to get their shit together.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go contemplate the possibility of that happening over a fifth and a loaded pistol.

  57. 57.

    Cris

    March 23, 2011 at 5:56 pm

    @cat48: I’d like to see that same poll done in TX.

  58. 58.

    FlipYrWhig

    March 23, 2011 at 5:59 pm

    @Dr Dave: I’ve never known if that’s a fact of life, that as voters age they’re more likely to accept Republican/conservative positions, or if voters basically vote the same way their whole lives, and the older ones now are the hippie-haters and “I Like Ike”-ers. Eventually we’ll have old people in nursing homes playing Xbox all day.

  59. 59.

    PeakVT

    March 23, 2011 at 6:03 pm

    losing the white vote by 11, he lost it by 12 in 2008, for example

    Dear fellow melanin-challenged Americans,

    Stop embarrassing me.

    Eskimo kisses,

    PeakVT

  60. 60.

    Citizen_X

    March 23, 2011 at 6:04 pm

    @Cris: I’d bet you it would look only slightly better for the GOP.

    The Valley (border/Rio Grande region) is 90+% hispanic, and it’s pretty reliably Democratic in presidential elections.

  61. 61.

    harokin

    March 23, 2011 at 6:04 pm

    @Garrigus Carraig: I’m sitting here in stunned silence, realizing it will have been at least 40 years since the Republicans won the White House without a Bush on the ticket. Just, wow. They need Pee, man.

  62. 62.

    cat48

    March 23, 2011 at 6:05 pm

    The poll can be googled: Republican poll Hispanics

    Favorable Unfavorable No Opinion

    Dems 62% 22% 17%

    Repubs 26% 47% 27%

    TParty 20%

    400 Hispanics

  63. 63.

    Nylund

    March 23, 2011 at 6:05 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The GOP can’t appeal to Latino voters without hopelessly alienating their base of racist white fucks.

    True, but also somewhat true for Democrats. The more Latinos embrace dems, the worse dems do among white voters according to recent research. I say “good riddance” to such people, but it has been observed that the democrats can’t seem to hold on to as many white voters the more they embrace non-white voters, although, thankfully, that pattern isn’t observed in this data. Hopefully, the democrats have already purged a good deal of the racists from the party.

  64. 64.

    Roger Moore

    March 23, 2011 at 6:07 pm

    @Caz:

    You don’t see these racial lines drawn when it comes to white candidates or politicians. White are evenly split between democrats and republicans, Gingrich and Obama, etc.

    Sure you do. Whites as a group lean Republican. Racist whites lean strongly Republican. If whites were truly equally divided and minorities leaned strongly Democratic, the electorate as a whole would lean moderately Democratic. That’s not the case.

  65. 65.

    priscianus jr

    March 23, 2011 at 6:09 pm

    @Caz:

    Is it really that simple? What do y’all think?

    No, it’s not that simple, it’s even simpler. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First of all, I don’t think “Hispanics” are more likely to vote for blacks than anyone else is. As for the blacks, they voted for Bill Clinton almost as strongly as they did for Obama.
    I do think a lot of whites DIDN’T vote for Obama because he’s black.
    OK, here’s the simple part: I think the reason most blacks and hispanics voted for Obama is the same reason that the whites who voted for him did: they preferred him to McCain/Palin. It’s just that there are more of such people among blacks and more of them among hispanics. But the reasons they all preferred him are not so different.
    By the way, think about this: 76% of Jewish voters voted for Obama in 2008.

  66. 66.

    Zach

    March 23, 2011 at 6:13 pm

    @Bob Loblaw:

    It seems to me a massive turnout operation in Texas alone would be the savviest business move the DNC has made in decades.

    Probably the biggest accomplishment of Clinton’s primary campaign was mobilizing the Latino vote and crushing in the California primary (and in general on Super Tuesday). Of course for her success in that, then-campaign-manager Patti Solis Doyle was bounced from the campaign.

  67. 67.

    Brachiator

    March 23, 2011 at 6:14 pm

    One caveat here: the overall sample was only 1500 people, so the number of Latinos in it was small enough that the margin of error is large. Still, this is a striking finding and it shows why Democrats will continue to have big advantages in presidential elections (where the proportion of non-white voters is elevated, relative to midterms) until the Republicans figure out how to appeal to Latino voters.

    Early surveys which put Obama up against “unnamed Republican” are especially meaningless. And surveys which lump all Latinos into a monolithic lump are doubly meaningless. Latino voters in Florida, New York, Arizona, Texas and California (the states with the largest number of Latino voters) are not monoliths, nor do they necessarily look at issues in the same way.

    Also, I noted in a previous thread that Obama won the white vote in the Northeast and West, a fact which I’m sure is not lost on GOP strategists.

    And while some like to insist that it’s only a Democrat vs Republican world, Independent voters will be hugely important.

    @Comrade DougJ:

    I’m never sure I buy that. People say blacks might vote Republican because they supposedly hate teh gay and so on.

    And the “blacks are the reason gay marriage failed in California” is a lie that just won’t die.

    And it’s weird that blacks and teh gay are pitted against each other as if all gay people are white, except for 3 Latino gays and Margaret Cho.

  68. 68.

    OzoneR

    March 23, 2011 at 6:15 pm

    @David in NY:

    But I sort of wondered why he could barely clear 51% with women, though.

    In these types of polls, that’s the low water mark. He’ll almost certainly win some, if not most, of the undecideds, which means he could get as high as 64%.

    If the undecideds break evenly, it means he gets 58% of women.

  69. 69.

    lamh32

    March 23, 2011 at 6:15 pm

    This might be a good place to post some video of Obama’s trip to South America, since it got virtually NO coverage here in America. I’d love to know from anyone who watches Spanish language TV if the South America trip received more coverage?

    ‘City of God’ welcomes Barack Obama

  70. 70.

    lamh32

    March 23, 2011 at 6:18 pm

    Obama cheered at Brazil’s ‘City of God’ favela

    Barack Obama also visited Brazil’s infamous “City of God” favela,

  71. 71.

    Calouste

    March 23, 2011 at 6:23 pm

    @Zifnab:

    Latinos don’t form a massive voting group in the South except in Florida, and the South is solid R anyway. What the Latinos will tip are Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and possibly Arizona. That’s at least 20 EV’s solidly in the D camp. It means Obama can lose Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa and still win.

  72. 72.

    MikeJ

    March 23, 2011 at 6:24 pm

    @Zach:

    Probably the biggest accomplishment of Clinton’s primary campaign was mobilizing the Latino vote and crushing in the California primary (and in general on Super Tuesday). Of course for her success in that, then-campaign-manager Patti Solis Doyle was bounced from the campaign.

    Bounced because it was a stupid way to win the Democratic nomination. In a Republican, winner-take-all contest, it was the right way to go. Not the fight they were in though. That campaign was the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Buncha morons couldn’t be arsed to read the rulebook for the contest they were in.

  73. 73.

    Mnemosyne

    March 23, 2011 at 6:25 pm

    @David in NY:

    Because, unfortunately, being a woman does not make one immune to being a racist. There are plenty of white women out there who would never vote for one of “them” no matter how nutty the Republican candidate is.

  74. 74.

    Chet

    March 23, 2011 at 6:26 pm

    @gex: Kristin Luker helps explain why in her book Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood:

    “The values that lead pro-life and pro-choice women into different attitudes toward abortion are the same values that led them at an earlier time to adopt different lifestyles that supported a given view of abortion.

    “For example, pro-life women have always valued family roles very highly and have arranged their lives accordingly. They did not acquire high-level educational and occupational skills, for example, because they married, and they married because their values suggested that this would be the most satisfying life open to them. Similarly, pro-choice women postponed (or avoided) marriage and family roles because they chose to acquire the skills they needed to be successful in the larger world, having concluded that the role of wife and mother was too limited for them. Thus, activists on both sides of the issue are women who have a given set of values about what are the most satisfying and appropriate roles for women, and they have made life commitments that now limit their ability to change their minds. Women who have many children and little education, for example, are seriously handicapped in attempting to become doctors or lawyers; women who have reached their late forties with few children or none are limited in their ability to build (or rebuild) a family. For most of these activists, therefore, their position on abortion is the ‘tip of the iceberg,’ a shorthand way of supporting and proclaiming not only a complex set of values but a given set of social resources as well.

    “To put the matter differently, we might say that for pro-life women the traditional division of life into separate male roles and female roles still works, but for pro-choice women it does not. Having made a commitment to the traditional female roles of wife, mother, and homemaker, pro-life women are limited in those kinds of resources-education, class status, recent occupational experiences-they would need to compete in what has traditionally been the male sphere, namely, the paid labor force. The average pro-choice woman, in contrast, is comparatively well endowed with exactly those resources: she is highly educated, she already has a job, and she has recent (and continuous) experience in the job market.

    “In consequence, anything that supports a traditional division of labor into male and female worlds is, broadly speaking, in the interests of pro-life women because that is where their resources lie.”

  75. 75.

    Incoherent Dennis SGMM

    March 23, 2011 at 6:30 pm

    The Democratic party is courting disaster if it continues to take the Latino vote as a given. As Brachiator noted in his post at #67, the Latino vote is far from being monolithic. I would add to that observation that Latino voter turnout is often low and that the Republicans have no problem with fielding successful Latino candidates where they can.

    In my opinion, the Dems would be well advised to put forth legislation to resolve our immigration dilemmas and to put some serious effort into GOTV work in the Latino community. Those Latino are ours only as long as we earn them.

  76. 76.

    Dr Dave

    March 23, 2011 at 6:32 pm

    @FlipYrWhig: The inevitability of older people voting conservative is an interesting question to which I also don’t know the answer. There is the old aphorism which goes something like “If you’re not a liberal when you’re young you have no heart, and if you’re not conservative when you’re old you have no brain,” but I can’t say that I actually know anybody who fits that description. YMMV, but my family has been in the liberal camp my entire life while my in-laws (with the exception of my wife and one of her brothers) have been conservatives since at least the Carter administration.

  77. 77.

    Joel

    March 23, 2011 at 6:33 pm

    @Cris: I think Nate Silver put that idea to rest some time ago. I can’t find the link unfortunately.

  78. 78.

    Cris

    March 23, 2011 at 6:36 pm

    @Chet: For most of these activists, therefore, their position on abortion is the ‘tip of the iceberg,’ a shorthand way of supporting and proclaiming not only a complex set of values but a given set of social resources as well.

    That seems to be the crux. The passage overall seems to be talking about feminism in general, not abortion in particular.

  79. 79.

    Brachiator

    March 23, 2011 at 6:39 pm

    @Dr Dave:

    The inevitability of older people voting conservative is an interesting question to which I also don’t know the answer.

    But this also has to do with specific appeals of the GOP to certain demographic groups. In other countries, such as the UK, people don’t inevitably switch from Liberal or Labour to Tory once they reach retirement age. The continued appeal of the GOP in the South and parts of the West, especially to older groups, is not solely based on people just getting old and ideologically crusty.

  80. 80.

    Cris

    March 23, 2011 at 6:48 pm

    @Dr Dave: Mileage definitely varies. The one thing I can see in favor of the common wisdom is less about age per se and more about changing economic status. As we get older, many of us develop a more secure lifestyle — family, property, career. And so our interest in policies develops accordingly.

    Having been a young Republican, though, I reject the aphorism. Young conservatives think they’re smart, but they are just as driven by emotion and lacking in brains as their young liberal counterparts.

  81. 81.

    gex

    March 23, 2011 at 6:57 pm

    @Brachiator: Almost as though they were pitted against each other deliberately in a divide and conquer tactic. Hmmm.

  82. 82.

    Brachiator

    March 23, 2011 at 6:59 pm

    @gex:

    Almost as though they were pitted against each other deliberately in a divide and conquer tactic. Hmmm.

    Hey, the old slimy tactics are tried and true.

  83. 83.

    Chet

    March 23, 2011 at 7:01 pm

    @Comrade DougJ: I’m inclined to agree with you. And the anti-Castro Cuban exiles – rich people itching for the day when they can go back home, reclaim their property, and get back to lording it over the rest of that island as in the good ol’ Batista days – are the exception that proves the rule.

  84. 84.

    Cris

    March 23, 2011 at 7:10 pm

    @Chet: I’m curious (but not curious enough to look it up): does the Asian mega-demographic have a similar split? That is, are Asian-American populations whose immigrations followed Communist takeovers (like Cambodia, maybe) more likely to be GOP supporters?

  85. 85.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    March 23, 2011 at 7:13 pm

    The GOP has a solution for this. It’s called disenfranchisement.

  86. 86.

    Cris

    March 23, 2011 at 7:14 pm

    Actually, I said I couldn’t even be bothered to Google, but here’s one breakdown from 2008 that came up in 30 seconds:

    Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indians, Japanese, and Koreans tend to affiliate with the Democratic Party and therefore to support Obama, while Vietnamese are more likely to identify as Republicans and support McCain.

    Whatever that means.

  87. 87.

    Tax Analyst

    March 23, 2011 at 7:23 pm

    @David in NY:

    And I think (though I may be wrong), a lot of other Hispanics think Cubans are snotty. Rich folk, just waiting to reclaim their property after the counter-revolution.

    Seems to ring true for the Miami Cuban-expat group. I’m not Hispanic, but I sure resent the hell out of the way they’ve hijacked our Cuban policy for 50 years.

  88. 88.

    AAA Bonds

    March 23, 2011 at 7:24 pm

    NICE lyric.

  89. 89.

    Brachiator

    March 23, 2011 at 7:45 pm

    @Cris:

    Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indians, Japanese, and Koreans tend to affiliate with the Democratic Party and therefore to support Obama, while Vietnamese are more likely to identify as Republicans and support McCain.

    In Los Angeles County, here’s the 2008 Asian breakdown for Obama (abbreviated)
    Asian 63% Obama
    Asian Indian 86% Obama
    Chinese 69% Obama
    Filipino 57% Obama
    Korean 60% Obama
    Vietnamese 51% Obama

    One interesting little nugget of Asians age 55 and over
    Native Born 66% Obama
    Foreign Born 48% Obama

    From: “Asian Americans at the Ballot Box,” Asian Pacific American Legal Center

  90. 90.

    Tom Q

    March 23, 2011 at 7:59 pm

    @Brachiator: I think it’s more particularly that today’s older age group formed its strongest allegiances during the Nixon/Reagan alignment, and they’re carrying those views to the grave. My strong recollection is that in 1984 — Reagan’s dastardly landslide — older voters (who still remembered the New Deal) were the GOP’s weakest group. So it’s not strictly an age thing.

    The demographic change among younger voters — or, put another way, the Last Really White Generation aspect of today’s old folks — makes it easy to look at it as a young/old divide, but it’s more a matter of political allegiance based on already-determined interest.

  91. 91.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    March 23, 2011 at 8:06 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Wait a few years, say 2020. The other day I saw a news report, where Arizona Teahadists were pissed at some renegade GOPers who voted against some very extreme anti-immigration bills. The angry Teahadists at this town hall were all old and gray, I’d waqer the youngest was at least mid-50’s. PPerhaps may do a FU to the Beckistanis in 2014, but that would take major minerals to do that.

  92. 92.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 23, 2011 at 8:13 pm

    @Mr Stagger Lee: Everything I have seen over the past few years leads me to believe that there is is real dividing line on issues of race and homophobia right around births in 1960. It might even be the parents of kids born in the 60s and later taught their children well. For those born after 1980, it seems even better. These are the kinds of things that keep me hopeful.

  93. 93.

    maus

    March 23, 2011 at 8:17 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The GOP can’t appeal to Latino voters without hopelessly alienating their base of racist white fucks. So they’re screwed.

    Technically they can do that in Miami, where older Cubans tend to be more racist towards blacks/Mexicans/Hatians, but it’s good to know that doesn’t work *everywhere*.

  94. 94.

    gex

    March 23, 2011 at 8:25 pm

    @Brachiator: The foreign born thing makes sense to me. My dad his siblings are from China, all very Republican.

    Here’s how Republican my dad is. It just became clear that he has been hiding 2/3 of his income from the tax man. (He’s divorcing my mom and so a CPA has to do their taxes). Now it might be helpful to know that he went to state schools and the got a job with Lockheed. Because when I called him on his bs, he said “the government would just waste it.”

    I had to say I agreed with him. I mean, we spend all this money educating Chinese immigrants and paying the really nice salaries to build weapons we don’t use. (Nothing he was on would be used in Iraq or Libya).

    My other favorite anecdote from him: when he retired and went to sign up for social security, he came home with a complaint about “all the foreigners there taking his money.”

    I wonder how he made a liberal out of me? ;)

    @Tom Q: One point I like to make is that all those older people were born before desegregation. Because I feel it is instructive somehow.

  95. 95.

    Tax Analyst

    March 23, 2011 at 8:46 pm

    @Brachiator:

    And it’s weird that blacks and teh gay are pitted against each other as if all gay people are white, except for 3 Latino gays and Margaret Cho.

    What? You mean there’s more than that? Well, I guess that’s true ’cause I think we have more than 3 Latino gays right here where I work.

    But no Margaret Cho.

  96. 96.

    Tax Analyst

    March 23, 2011 at 8:57 pm

    @Calouste:

    Latinos don’t form a massive voting group in the South except in Florida, and the South is solid R anyway.

    Do you mean Latinos don’t form a monolithic block voting group in the South, Except FL?

    And I would argue against your presumption that the South will automatically go R. Yes, it certainly leans “R”, but remember, Obama won Florida in the 2008 General Election 51%-48%. Took NC & VA and didn’t do all that badly in GA (47-52%).

    And Gore probably won the Florida vote in 2000, although that’s now pretty much a moot point.

    It’s not a good idea to automatically cede the South to the “R’s”, it leaves very little room for error elsewhere.

  97. 97.

    Calouste

    March 23, 2011 at 9:30 pm

    @Tax Analyst:

    Just not that many of them (besides Texas, which I forgot). The range is from 3% in Missouri to 9% in Georgia.

    There is still quite a big margin of error. Both Gore and Kerry would have won if they had picked up NV, NM and CO, even though they lost all of the South and parts of the MidWest. There’s no reason to automatically cede the South, but it helps to know that you will still win even if the Katherine Harisses of the world stack the deck against you.

  98. 98.

    Zach

    March 23, 2011 at 10:36 pm

    @MikeJ: “Bounced because it was a stupid way to win the Democratic nomination.”

    In the California campaign in particular, Clinton gamed the proportional delegates thing to great success. I agree that, in general, trying to rack up wins instead of delegates was a bad move. In a race with more than two candidates grabbing significant amounts of delegates it’s not a bad idea, but it became a two-horse race very quickly.

  99. 99.

    rikyrah

    March 23, 2011 at 10:43 pm

    well, they keep on doing ‘WHAT ABOUT IF YOU AIN’T WHITE DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND’ laws all across the country…..

    Black folks already know which way is up, so we know they’re not about us..

    Latinos better get hip and real soon..

    and they also better figure out that Senator Anchor Baby Rubio will throw their asses over and support those ‘ WHAT ABOUT IF YOU AIN’T WHITE DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND ‘ laws.

    he supports the one in Florida they’re trying to pass.

  100. 100.

    lol

    March 23, 2011 at 11:47 pm

    @Zach:

    Clinton crushed on Super Tuesday? She got fewer delegates than Obama on Super Tuesday, the day that she was supposed to win the nomination. She didn’t win the day in net delegates until March in Ohio, and even then just barely(she won Ohio, but lost Texas).

    Super Tuesday was a disappointment for Obama only in that expectations had risen to such heights that he was expected to win massive upsets in California, Massachusetts, New York and elsewhere.

    Still, your point about her mobilizing latinos stands.

  101. 101.

    estamm

    March 24, 2011 at 7:34 am

    Rubio for president? Was he born in this country? Where is his birth certificate? Does anyone remember him when he was a child? I find it very strange that no one in this country can remember him as a child. Obviously he is hiding something.

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