Not all the voters have arrived in CONUS yet...wait a few more years...
So, 61% of these catholics voted for the abortion party?
I think this says more about Hispanics than it say about GWB.
A friend of mine tells me Hispanics tend to be conservative. He says that once immigrant Hispanics feel comfortable in this country and learn more about politics, they move to the Republican party.
They're just like anyone else: The shallow Democratic "message" (scare tactics) works on them until they learn the truth.
Let's see -- most Hispanics are Catholic and retain Catholic notions about the importance of family. They are getting fooled by the Dims but increasingly realise it. Even blacks are realising it
Don't excerpt NRO.
The good:
In Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, and Wisconsin — six battleground states, containing an NEP sample size of 1,768 Hispanic voters — conservative 527 groups ran a vigorous 12,000-spot broadcast campaign on Spanish-language media in support of the G.O.P. ticket. In the remaining 14 states, containing an NEP sample size of 1,818 Hispanic voters — no such campaign aired.
… In the states where the conservative Spanish-language 527s were active, Bush carried 47.17 percent of the population-weighted Latino vote, compared to 52.25 percent for Kerry. In the 14 states where the 527s were inactive, Bush won 35.96 percent of the Hispanic vote, Kerry 61.65 percent — a result almost unchanged from Gore’s 62-to-35 percent advantage of 2000.
…
… Comparing the 2004 NEP state exit polls to their 2000 VNS counterparts, Bush’s Hispanic share grew 5 points in Colorado, 7 in Florida, 9 in Arizona, and 12 in New Mexico. The sample size in these four states is still a healthy 1,503. Weighting these states by Hispanic population, so that the GOP’s 12-point increase in New Mexico is not treated equally with, say, Florida’s 7-point increase, the weighted GOP increase in the 4-state sample is 7.60 percent — a shift of better than 15 votes per hundred for President Bush.
…
Almost all conservative progress on minority media has been generated in the 527 world, by party irregulars. The official organs of the Republican party have been missing in action, producing either weak product or no product for mass-minority audiences.
This is dynamite information, so far as it goes. Unfortunately, Nadler doesn’t offer any breakdown of the content of those Spanish language ads, so we can’t yet determine how much of the success in turning those ads into GOP votes was from the access provided to the Spanish speaking audience and how much was due to specific content. Were there content differences in the Spanish language 527 ads in those four states, vs. what the Bush campaign and other 527s were delivering, in English, to Spanish speaking voters elsewhere? I have no speculation on that point, but it should be examined further.
Now the obtuse:
The Hispanic vote does not track the white vote. Above, we’ve seen that the Hispanic vote “tracks” what’s happening on the ground in particular places, not some macro-trend. But even in its generalized (i.e., irrelevant) form, this assertion is untrue. Look at the trends in white and Hispanic voting for Republican presidential candidates over the last 28 years in the New York Times exit polls:
1976-1980: White vote +4, Hispanic vote +9
1980-1984: White vote + 8, Hispanic vote +4
1984-1988: White vote -5, Hispanic vote -7
1988-1992: White vote -19, Hispanic vote -9
1992-1996: White vote +6, Hispanic vote -4
1996-2000: White vote +8, Hispanic vote +10
Over the entire period, the average variation between changes in white and Hispanic voting was 5.5 points per election. To an election strategist, these figures signal wild variation. Any professional looking at those numbers would seek independent variables to explain them. And the first thing he’d examine is differences in the communications that the two groups are receiving.
It’s rare one sees a dilemma so false on its face, so we should savor this. Citing variation between White and Hispanic voting doesn’t refute the general and obvious tracking trend that the two groups shift votes from one party to the other quite consistently. That was Sailer’s point about “the general pattern that the Hispanic vote for Republicans rises and falls in the same cycles as the white vote — just consistently more Democratic.” When White GOP votes are up, Hispanic GOP votes are up; when Hispanic GOP votes are down White GOP votes are also down. The tracking is quite consistent, though obviously not identical, and can’t be dismissed with a little handwaving about variation. Yes, we should look for independent variables, but we shouldn’t dismiss the numbers in front of our noses.
Nadler dismisses the tracking by referring to received communications, but he offers nothing to explore differences in communication the two groups were receiving in those elections. Both may be in play, we just don’t know, but it’s rather sloppy of Nadler to compare apples from 2004 with oranges from 1976 through 2000 and then make unsubstantiated declarations about the whole bushel.
While the need to analyze the content of the Spanish language 527 ads is acknowledged, a conclusion that suggests itself in the tracking numbers above is that Hispanics shouldn’t be approached as a monolithic voting bloc, with interests and concerns that are unrelated to the interests and concerns of White voters. Yet Nadler misses it altogether.
Why all the effort from "conservatives" to down play Bush's Hispanic support?