What is remarkable about the Latino vote for U.S. Senate in 2010 is how consistent it was with past results. It remained within a historically steady range, largely independent of the idiosyncrasies and personalities in particular campaigns. This stability reinforces the idea that the Latino vote is stable and predictable, guided mainly by party loyalty, shaped by the variable level of turnout from contest-to-contest, but mostly unmoved by issue appeals and campaign themes. In the following pages, I will lay out more evidence of this invariance, in addition to what I have written in previous CIS reports.
This Backgrounder makes three straightforward points. First, gains for Republicans as the result of Latino support in the 2010 election were, at best, modest. The gains were more notable in some races than in others, but overall the results remained consistent with historical patterns, in spite of the impressive gains made by the GOP among other voters. Latino voters, like other voters, continue to be driven primarily by party identification when they cast their ballots. Swing voting is not dramatic, though inter-election fluctuations in enthusiasm and turnout are more notable.
Second, whatever gains Republicans did make among Latinos had little to do with immigration policy, or policy positions taken for or against more generous immigration. To be sure, the recruitment of Latino Republican candidates helped marginally, as Hispanics, like other ethnic voters, often use surname cues to guide their vote when they are otherwise undecided. However, a fundamental lesson from this election is that Republicans can gain vote share among Latinos not by taking dramatically different positions on immigration policy, but when they recruit credible Hispanic candidates to run for major offices.
Finally, Hispanic voters were largely oblivious to the Tea Party movement during 2010, with a large share expressing no opinion about these myriad local groups and their issues. Overall, support for Republicans in locations with high Tea Party activity was neither higher nor lower than for Republicans in other locations. Their mixed reaction appears to correspond to research suggesting that Latinos were not particularly enthusiastic about going to the polls in 2010, with turnout running below 2006 levels (Lopez 2010a).
Unfortunately for all Republican candiates, Newt’s position of pandering to the Hispanic voting block has been made public and will influence the discourse from here on out.
The Hispanic voting block can’t help now but to compare and contrast other Republican candidate’s with Newt’s stated position.
This will wind up making it more difficult for any Republican to win the general election, since it will amplify an Obama talking point.
WHEN WILL THE ESTABLISHMENT LEARN that tacking towards your opponent is NEVER a winning strategy in elections.
It is foolish to claim that your opponent’s biggest strength in attracting their own voting base - is also your strength. It merely makes you look like a watered-down version of them.
Republicans need to attack that issue from a completely different angle - once people are in America and working - the more other people who come into the job market, the more competition they have against them for their own job.
From that perspective - even illegal aliens working here would not want MORE illegal aliens coming in.
America needs jobs, not workers.
Big business leaders who are stupid love cheap labor - so they love the idea of an enormous oversupply of workers - and having workers pay slashed to nothing. They have no clue about quality, to them it’s just a joke. But big business has gotten behind every candidate who wants to open the floodgates for cheap labor.