Most Cuban-Americans and Venezuelan-Americans tend to support the Republican Party, while Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominican-Americans tend to support the Democratic Party. But Mexican-Americans are 64% of all Hispanics, so dominate the results.
In the 2010 midterm elections, 60% of Hispanics voted Democratic, while 38% voted Republican.
According to an October 2010 report by the Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics rank education, jobs, and health care as their top three issues of concern. Immigration ranks as the fourth most important issue for all Latinos.
Republicans have long maintained their party is a natural fit for Hispanics, particularly recent immigrants, because of the party’s social conservatism, anti-abortion stance and positions for private school vouchers and other school choice proposals as well as lower taxes.
(However, ironically, long-time immigrants increasingly lean Republican, often because the Democrats just cannot get it through their heads that Hispanics are not just a variety of lighter-skinned blacks, so the Democrats can take them for granted, and they will respond to similar patronizing promises that are never delivered.)
The most Hispanic-savvy Republicans are the Texans, who understand Mexican-Americans a lot better than most Republicans.
For example, many Mexican-Americans are in favor of tighter border controls, *unless* the advocates of these controls tinge their arguments in anti-Mexican (ethnic) terms. They are very sensitive to prejudice directed against them, and it can turn them against anyone.
Importantly, Mexicans integrate differently depending on where they settle, and their new home does have an effect on their political leanings. For example in Los Angeles they can easily ghettoize, and not integrate at all, which favors Democrats. But in Phoenix, they have to integrate, living and working around whites, and they integrate quickly and prefer Republicans.
It was a simple enough request.
What were those years that the guaranteed Hispanic vote did not deliver for the Democrats?