The "Hispanic" Vote - Swinging for Latino

Check out this great article on the breakdown of the Hispanic vote and how a candidates stance on immigration can determine if they'll get the Hispanic vote or not.

But before that:

Here's my lightbulb of the day from a conversation with a co-worker:

co-worker: The Republicans don't need to win the Hispanic vote, they just need to lower the amount of hispanics voting for democrats. That means if they are not going to vote for McCain they need to figure out how to make them stay home.

me: Now I get why on KKKob they've been asking people to abstain from voting. They've been saying for months now, "don't vote for the lesser of 2 evils, if you don't beleive a candidate can lead our country, stay home." Damn that's sneaky.

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By Marjorie Childress 07/01/2008

ALBUQUERQUE—As New Mexico emerges as a key swing state in the 2008 elections, the two parties are increasingly focusing on the state’s Latino electorate as a key demographic.

Nationwide, Barack Obama has nearly a 3-to-1 advantage over John McCain among Latino voters, according to a poll released June 16. The telephone poll of Latino voters conducted by Pacific Market Research in collaboration with University of Washington political scientists found that 60 percent planned to vote for Obama, 23 percent for McCain and 16 percent were undecided. The researchers combined New Mexico data with other southwestern "battleground" states and found Obama leading McCain in those states 57 percent to 26 percent.

During a May 30 foreign press briefing, Susan Minushkin, Deputy Director of the Pew Hispanic Center, described the enormous growth as well as the increasing dispersion of the Latino community across the nation, but also explained that Hispanic eligible voters are concentrated in a few select states, giving Hispanics more influence in presidential elections due to their ability to influence key state races.

New Mexico has the largest rate of eligible voters who are Hispanic of any state: 38 percent. California and Texas have 25 and 23 percent, respectively. In seven other states, Hispanics constitute between 11 and 20 percent of eligible voters: Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado.

Of these states, the so-called "battleground" states are New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Florida, and possibly Arizona.

Given the statistics and the winner-take-all nature of the electoral college, the significance of Latino voters in New Mexico becomes apparent.
But in New Mexico, Obama can’t take the Latino vote for granted.

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