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Posted on 05/03/2013 2:36:46 PM PDT by jdirt
After six months of mulling over November's election results, many Republicans remain convinced that the party's only path to future victory is to improve the GOP's appeal to Hispanic voters. But how many Hispanic voters do Republicans need to attract before the party can again win the White House?
A lot. Start with the 2012 exit polls. The New York Times' Nate Silver has created an interactive tool in which one can look at the presidential election results and calculate what would have happened if the racial and ethnic mix of voters had been different. The tool also allows one to project future results based on any number of scenarios in which the country's demographic profile and voting patterns change.
In 2012, President Obama famously won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote to Mitt Romney's 27 percent. If all other factors remained the same, how large a percentage of the Hispanic vote would Romney have had to win to capture the White House?
Sign Up for the Byron York newsletter! What if Romney had won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, the high-water mark for Republicans achieved by George W. Bush in 2004? As it turns out, if Romney had hit that Bush mark, he still would have lost, with 240 electoral votes to 298 for Obama.
But what if Romney had been able to make history and attract 50 percent of Hispanic voters? What then? He still would have been beaten, 283 electoral votes to 255.
What if Romney had been able to do something absolutely astonishing for a Republican and win 60 percent of the Hispanic vote? He would have lost by the same margin, 283 electoral votes to 255.
But what if Romney had been able to reach a mind-blowing 70 percent of the Hispanic vote? Surely that would have meant victory, right? No, it wouldn't. Romney still would have lost, although by the narrowest of electoral margins, 270 to 268. (Under that scenario, Romney would have won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College; he could have racked up huge numbers of Hispanic votes in California, New York and Texas, for example, and not changed the results in those states.)
According to the Times' calculator, Romney would have had to win 73 percent of the Hispanic vote to prevail in 2012. Which suggests that Romney, and Republicans, had bigger problems than Hispanic voters.
The most serious of those problems was that Romney was not able to connect with white voters who were so turned off by the campaign that they abandoned the GOP and in many cases stayed away from the polls altogether. Recent reports suggest as many as 5 million white voters simply stayed home on Election Day. If they had voted at the same rate they did in 2004, even with the demographic changes since then, Romney would have won.
Likewise, the white vote is so large that an improvement of 4 points -- going from 60 percent to 64 percent of those whites who did vote -- would have won the race for Romney.
So which would have been a more realistic goal for Romney -- matching the white turnout from just a few years earlier, or winning 73 percent of Hispanic voters?
Everyone knows the Hispanic vote will grow in the future. But if 2012 voting patterns remain the same -- whites voting in lower numbers but about 60 percent for Republicans, blacks and Asians turning out in large numbers and voting 90-plus percent and 70-plus percent, respectively, for Democrats -- Republicans will have to win an astonishingly high percentage of the Hispanic vote to capture the White House.
It is simply not reasonable to believe there is something the GOP can do -- pass immigration reform, juice up voter-outreach efforts -- that will create that result.
That doesn't mean future Republican presidential candidates should not work to increase their share of the Hispanic vote. They could, for example, actually campaign in areas with large numbers of Hispanic voters.
But here is the real solution. Romney lost because he did not appeal to the millions of Americans who have seen their standard of living decline over the past decades. They're nervous about the future. When Romney did not address their concerns, they either voted for Obama or didn't vote at all. If the next Republican candidate can address their concerns effectively, he will win. And, amazingly enough, he'll win a lot more Hispanic votes in the process. A lot from other groups, too.
It would do more than any immigration bill or outreach program ever could.
I would say this is a state-by-state thing, and not a national situation. If you could roll up a majority of Florida hispanics....it would make a difference....same for Colorado.
Republicans are not going to roll up Hispanic votes any quicker than they roll up black vote. They are friggin dreaming to think they will.
These votes are bought and paid for by the Democrats. The only way to get them is to bankrupt the nation by outbidding the democrats. Not only can we not afford it ,but it cannot be done.
They can’t even roll up the white vote.
This party is without direction or meaning.
The path for GOP victory is the same one taken by Reagan and both Bushs. It is the working family Reagan democrats whose jobs were exported. Bring back the jobs is to bring back the votes. BTW The immigrants sought after would be gathered in the working family vote.
Previous GOP vote gathering techniques such as ‘we’re pro-life’, ‘we’re more pro-war’ and ‘we’re anti-communist’ have worn out their welcome. Now it’s the jobs, stupid. But if the GOP just wants people searching to cut government and bulge their pockets, say adios to the presidential winning circle.
Good points. The country’s changed a lot since the Reagan era, though. There once was a conservative Democrat bloc that Republicans could have for the asking. Those people have either died or become Republicans or become liberal Democrats (something similar happened to liberal Republicans). For Republicans, getting over 50% is harder than it was a generation ago.
Amen
Obama won because of illegal, fraudulent voting. Unless and until we have voter id, the repubs will win no more. Who believes only 7% of the voting public was Hispanic. More than that voted in my precinct and most of them were not able to speak English.
Elections will continue the downhill slide to becoming more and more of a popularity contest for the politician who promises to give the most free stuff to the expanding moocher class.
The only ways that will change is when the nation goes totally bankrupt or an apocalyptic calamity of some sort strikes. It will take something like a World War, a nuclear attack or a world wide natural disaster to drive us back into a survival mode.
Then common sense will once again prevail over political correctness and government corruption.
The problem is that hispanics — especially recent “immigrants” — are overwhelmingly socialist. And, let’s face it, no one can out-socialist the Democrats.
Do we know for sure they didn't vote, or that they did vote but their votes weren't counted?
-PJ
But, Illegal Alien Amnesty does not have an effect on Florida as much...as their Hispanics are mainly Puerto Rican and Cuban.....PR are US citizens and Cubans already have a law that allows them certain immigration rights because of Communist Cuba.....their voting won’t be affected.
Correct on all that
Reagan won in 1980 by securing the Midwest working man vote by ensuring there will be no dumping...these were the Reagan Democrats
Too bad the RINO Free Traders have taken this off the table in later elections. The GOP loses elections not by refusing illegal alien amnesty to Hispanics...but loses by telling Reagan Democrats their jobs are being shipped to (insert third world hell hole here).
‘Reagan Democrats’ is an outdated term. Today those guys are called the Republican base.
In 08 John McCain might as well have told us to go ahead and vote for Obama when he came to Michigan and said, your jobs aren’t coming back, get over it.
Romney didn’t do himself any favors by attacking Santorum for reaching out to Michigan blue collar workers for their ideas on rebuilding manufacturing.
Exactly....
McCain was clueless about American economics. Obama could have promised unicorns and still would have won
Romney actually raised the jobs issue in 2008 and won the Mich primary... then bleeped himself in 2012 attacking Santorum for raising same issue
Santorum was smart in downplaying things like capitol gains taxes and talking about taxes that the guy on the factory floor sees on a daily basis. Things like our repetitive taxation of manufactured products, gas taxes etc.
Romney not being pro-life and other things, hurt him badly and has threatened the future of the GOP.
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