More 2012 Election Myths: Yes, Hispanics favor Dems but didn't decide election

Washington Examiner ^ | 11/23/2012 | Byron York

[SeekAndFind]

After moments of panic in the immediate aftermath of Mitt Romney's defeat, some Republicans and conservatives are regaining their equilibrium on the issue of what the GOP should do about immigration and the Hispanic vote.

They're looking at key questions from the campaign, like how much of Barack Obama's victory was attributable to Hispanic support. They're also looking at the Hispanic electorate itself to see how big a role immigration, versus a wide range of other issues, played in voting decisions. The goal, of course, is to win a larger portion of the Hispanic vote, but first to take a clear-eyed look at what actually happened on Nov. 6.

And the lesson for Republicans is: Take your time. Calmly reassess your positions. Don't pander.

The first question is whether Hispanic voters gave Obama his margin of victory. In a recent analysis, the New York Times' Allison Kopicki and Will Irving looked at vote totals in each state, plus the percentage of the vote cast by Hispanics, to see what the outcome would have been had Hispanics voted differently.

For example, they looked at Wisconsin, a state the Romney-Ryan team hoped to win. Hispanics weren't a huge part of the total vote -- about 4 percent, according to the exit polls -- and Obama won big among them, 65 percent to 31 percent. But going through the totals, Kopicki and Irving concluded that even if every single Hispanic voter in Wisconsin had cast a ballot for Romney, Obama still would have won.

They found the same result for New Hampshire and Iowa, two other swing states Romney looked to win.

Then there was Ohio. According to the exit polls, Obama won 53 percent of the Hispanic vote there. But given how decisively Obama won other voting groups, Kopicki and Irving found that the president would have prevailed in Ohio even if he had won just 22 percent of the Hispanic vote. Put another way, even if Romney had won a stratospheric 78 percent of the Hispanic vote, he still would have lost Ohio.

In Virginia, Obama won the Latino vote 65 percent to 33 percent. Kopicki and Irving found that if those numbers had been reversed -- if Romney had won an unprecedented 65 percent of the Latino vote -- Obama still would have won Virginia.

Even in states where the Hispanic vote played a bigger role, Romney could have made significant gains among Hispanics and still lost. In Colorado, for example, the president won Hispanics by a huge margin, 75 percent to 23 percent. Kopicki and Irving found that Romney could have increased his margin to 42 percent -- a major improvement for a Republican -- and still come up short in Colorado.

The bottom line is that even if Romney had made historic gains among Hispanic voters, he still would have lost the election. That means Romney underperformed among more than just Hispanic voters. And that means winning more Hispanic votes is far from the GOP's only challenge.

Then there is the question of what motivates Hispanic voters. "They should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example)," columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote Nov. 8. "The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants." Krauthammer urged Republicans to accept amnesty for illegals, accompanied by a completed border fence.

Some other conservatives echoed Krauthammer's sentiments. But social scientist Charles Murray looked across a broad range of data and found little to support the notion that Hispanics are natural Republicans. Hispanics "aren't more religious than everyone else ... aren't married more than everyone else ... aren't more conservative than everyone else," Murray wrote. In addition, Hispanics don't work harder than other groups and are only slightly more pro-life than the rest of the population.

The available data, Murray concluded, "paint a portrait that gives no reason to think that Republicans have an untapped pool of social conservatives to help them win elections."

In addition, exit poll information suggests Hispanics voted on a number of issues beyond illegal immigration -- and those issues favored Democrats. A majority of Hispanics who voted Nov. 6 favored keeping Obamacare. A majority favored higher taxes for higher earners. A majority -- two-thirds, in fact -- said abortion should be legal.

None of this is to say the GOP shouldn't seek more Hispanic votes. There are opportunities; for example, Romney made significant inroads among Hispanic voters with college degrees. But the fact is, Republicans had a serious problem with lots of voters, as well as potential voters who didn't go to the polls. The Hispanic vote was just part of it.

-- Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent,

[SeekAndFind]

RE: The deciding factor wasn`t the hispanic vote... it was the sharp national turn to the political left. Under no realistic notion can we consider America a center-right country ever again

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It looks like we should take Gallup and its polls with a grain of salt in the future. Not only were they VERY INACCURATE in their polls in November 2012, their poll just 10 months earlier gave us this:

SOURCE: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71385.html

TITLE:
Gallup poll: Conservatives outnumber liberals

EXCERPT:

________________________________

Conservatives continue to make up the largest segment of political views in the country, outnumbering liberals nearly two-to-one, according to a new poll Thursday.

The Gallup survey found that 40 percent of Americans consider themselves conservative; 35 percent consider themselves moderate; and 21 percent see themselves as liberal. The figures did not change from 2010.

For the third straight year, conservatives outnumbered both moderates and liberals.

Conservatives began outstripping moderates in 2008, and the percentage of moderates has declined steadily over the past two decades, from 43 percent 1992 to 35 percent in 2011.

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Can we believe Gallup’s above poll early January 2012?

If as the Gallup poll tells us Conservatives in this country are TWICE the number of Liberals, then something must have happened in just 10 months to either:

* Cause Conservatives to decrease

* Cause Liberals to increase

* Cause moderates to turn left.

Or maybe the Gallup poll was just total garbage.

[SmokingJoe]

Now you’re telling us that Tea Party supporters boycotted the elections en masse... enough to have given Romney the over 3 million votes he needed to defeat Obama in the popular vote?

Where’s the evidence of that?

The 2010 elections where the Tea Party driven GOP proceeded to obliterate the 0bozo lead Democratic Party not just in the US congress, but in the state governorships as well as the state houses of assemblies in one of the biggest electoral swings/defeats for the Democrats or or any party in history(if not the biggest electoral swing)?

[SeekAndFind]

Where was the Tea Party when one of their best candidates was running in Florida? ALAN WEST.

The Tea Party was responsible for helping Richard Murdock defeat Dick Lugar in the Indiana primaries... where were they in the November 2012 elections?

Face it, there just aren’t enough Tea Party supporters.

[ScottinVA]

The Gallup poll didn`t sort out the liars among the group surveyed. Some who claimed to be “conservative and “moderate”...weren`t.

Liberalism rules the political orientation in this country now. The sheep caught on to the fact self-directed prosperity is too much work when a plethora of freebies is there for the taking.

[SharpRightTurn]

“my impression is that almost all the population growth in the US is minorities, who are highly biased toward Dem voting.”

My (anecdotal) observation: in my town, 97% of the immigrants I run into are third-worlders. I encounter almost no white immigrants (i.e., immigrating within the last 20 years).

We are being flooded with millions of future (and present) welfare dependents and definite Dhimm voters.

And the brilliant Republicans do not lift a finger to try to stop it.

Are they that stupid or are they knowingly complicit in destroying America though it means the demise of their own party?

[greeneyes]

Are they that stupid or are they knowingly complicit in destroying America though it means the demise of their own party?

******************************************************

Well you see, many don’t care much about party either. Long as they can keep their power and benefits. They can always change their positions on issues or even just change their party to Independent or Democrat or some new yet to be determined group.

[urtax$@work]

The week of November 11th while visiting Houston- i listened to KSEV 700AM talk from 6-9AM - it was (i think) ,Mack Machowicz hosting or maybe Paul Bettencourt the day before...BUT - a caller sounding middle to older age talked about being at a truck stop on I35? near the OK border day before election and seeing caravans of buses coming from Mexico on their way up north... and he asked the attendant who said it had been going on a while- he said he stayed there all that day watching the buses from Mexico come and go..

I did not get the full story ,but if some FReeper from Houston did hear all of this - Please reply with more details. Thanks.

[urtax$@work]

another memory fragment- the truck stop could have been on US Hwy 75 because i thought the caller said Denison Texas

that route take you more to a NE direction

[SmokingJoe]

Where was the Tea Party when one of their best candidates was running in Florida? ALAN WEST

The Tea Party was responsible for helping Richard Murdock defeat Dick Lugar in the Indiana primaries... where were they in the November 2012 elections?

Face it, there just aren’t enough Tea Party supporters.

I see you carefully avoided addressing the point about the 2010 elections that I raised, and instead contended yourself with repeating the same spiel that I addressed in the last post. An Allen West or Richard Murdock in a congressional district and one US Senate election does not invalidate the Tea Party tsunami that swept Republicans into power at all levels of government throughout the country in the 2010 elections. Local factors, as well as the fact that the top of the GOP ticket, Mitt Romney(who was no conservative), may very well have played a part in the relatively low turn out for the GOP in general in this 2012 elections.

[neverdem]

The deciding factor wasn`t the hispanic vote... it was the sharp national turn to the political left. Under no realistic notion can we consider America a center-right country ever again.

Look at the numbers. Although we nominated a bunch of turkeys this year, things are better than 2008.

Romney passes McCain's 2008 popular vote total, Obama 5.5 mil behind '08 total

The Party’s Problem

Romney was not a drag on the Republican party. The Republican party was a drag on him. Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post that Romney ran ahead of most of the Republican Senate candidates: He did better than Connie Mack in Florida, George Allen in Virginia, Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, Denny Rehberg in Montana, Jeff Flake in Arizona, Pete Hoekstra in Michigan, Deb Fischer in Nebraska, Rick Berg in North Dakota, Josh Mandel in Ohio, and of course Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. In some cases Romney did a lot better. (He also did slightly better than Ted Cruz in Texas, a race Blake for some reason ignored.)