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The Pew has published a major new survey of American Hispanics correlating religious affiliation with political views and voting tendencies. And it tells you a lot about the great lost opportunity the Republican Party once had with this important and rapidly growing part of the electorate.
The assumption used to be that Hispanics/Latinos would steadily trend Republican as (a) they gained a firmer stake in the middle-class and (b) drifted more numerously into the evangelical Protestant fold where they’d be hearing conservative political messages from the pulpit and the broader community. On this latter note, as recently as 2007, an earlier Pew survey found a plurality of Hispanic Evangelicals self-identifying as Republicans.
Today Hispanic Evangelical Protestants remain notably more open to Republican voting than Hispanic Catholics (which isn’t saying much, since they favor Obama by a 73-19 margin), but they still are projected to vote for Obama over Romney by a 50-39 margin. Two groups that are rarely discussed, religiously unaffiliated Hispanics and mainline Protestant Hispanics, also help push Obama’s overall margins in this demographic to 69-21, better than the 67-31 margin he posted in 2008, despite four years in which Hispanics suffered enormously from bad economic circumstances.
Republicans must have really, really wanted the nativist bender on immigration policy they’ve been on for the last few years. They’re paying for it now by way of a freeze and then reversal in their once-bright prospects for gains among Hispanics. And late Romney efforts to arouse anger at Obama for not pursuing the comprehensive immigration reform his own party abandoned aren’t helping.
UPDATE: There’s a big Nagourney/Santos piece up at the New York Times site on the Hispanic vote’s central importance in the battleground states of Colorado, Nevada and Florida.
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stormskies on October 19, 2012 11:42 AM:
Right, and let's remember how often we use to hear that for any Repiglican to win a presidential contest they would have to win at least 40% of the Hispanic vote.
Remember ?
And now we never hear this anymore. Why ? Because, of course, of the 67-31 margin for Obama.
Just another way that the corporate media and it's props called pundits controls what people see and hear in order to control how they think, and vote.
c u n d gulag on October 19, 2012 12:02 PM:
I find it interesting that, despite the Catholic Churches best efforts with all followers to swing the election towards the Republicans, that the Hispanic Catholics are still trending that much towards Obama.
The leaders of the Catholic Church are growing more and more obtuse at the same time they're getting more dicatorial.
Not a good sign for them that more and more people are ignoring the Church's edicts on social issues.
I think more Catholics want to hear about poverty and Christ's teachings about that, instead of sexual politics.
And, after the discovery of all of the child molestation over the past few decades, sexual politics is something the church would be wise to avoid.
Arguing that a child must be brought to term, might be taken by non-believers like me to mean that they need more children to sexually abuse in the future.
I wonder how practicing Catholics view their churches involvement in sexual politics?
Anyone out there who's a commenter know?
Mimikatz on October 19, 2012 12:10 PM:
The rejection of Latinos and the rigid anti-choice and anti-contraception positions, are why the GOP will not win a decisive victory, ever, no matter how organized and relentless they are. They represent a shrinking demographic and as this dilemma with Latinos has demonstrated, they are prisoners of their declining demographic. As GOP governors further erode services in their. States, particularly in the South, population will self-deport to more open, tolerant and economically vigorous areas, aka the blue states. It will take much work, but we can keep them contained.
K Wilson on October 19, 2012 12:26 PM:
Hispanic Catholics have long been accustomed to ignoring the pronouncements of the church on political issues. Consider the long and sorry association of the church hierarchy with corrupt oligarchies in most of Latin America.
One sign that the Republican descent into extremism has subsided is when they abandon nativism and start to court Hispanics. It won't happen soon, but eventually demographics will make it inevitable.
schtick on October 19, 2012 12:41 PM:
I never thought I would live long enough to see the teapub party embrace the Catholic religion or the Catholic religion embrace the teapubs.
I wonder if it's because the Catholic Church has done so well covering up their sexual perversion for so long and teapubs can learn from that? Or maybe they can pool their vast amounts of money to push out science and push religion into everything except their sexual escapades.
Amazing the American bishops/priests have switched from wine to teapub koolaid.
Rabbler on October 19, 2012 1:18 PM:
So are moderates going to already start making excuses for why we can never get back to the hard core socialism of FDR or LBJ?
Rathskeller on October 19, 2012 4:09 PM:
This is one area where Karl Rove had insights that were completely correct, going back to 2002 or so, but nevertheless, he could not change the party's inexorable movement towards nativism and racism. Tant pis.
They are sowing what they reaped.
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