President 2012: Does the GOP Have a Hispanic Voter Problem?

Yes and President Obama will exploit it in 2012.

Hispanic population. Latinos made up half of all U.S. population growth in the past decade, by far the fastest growing group. Hispanics have nearly doubled to make up 16% of the country. We’ve said it here before, and now with the new Census numbers out it’s worth repeating: Latinos are already a serious political force in America and their influence will only get bigger. And that could be problematic for Republicans on a presidential level, because overwhelmingly right now, they prefer Democrats. Obama won Latinos 67%-31% in 2008, and they made up just 9% of the electorate. In the 2010 exit polls, when Republicans swept Democrats out of the U.S. House, Hispanics still preferred Democrats by a similar 64%-34% margin. And they made up just 8% of the electorate. In fact, look at the states out West with large Hispanic populations and how Democrats performed out West vs. the Midwest. In states with high Hispanic populations, Democrats were able to keep their losses to a minimum, holding on to Senate seats in Colorado and Nevada, keeping California fairly blue and holding on to House seats in Arizona they should have lost. As one Republican operative said to us in April 2010: “We have problems, clearly, with Hispanics,” the operative said. “If we do not manage an immigration bill appropriately, and we alienate Hispanics, Obama’s going to run up his numbers in the 70s [with Hispanics]. That is not a sustainable model to win.”

The national GOP will soon have to decide on a strategy to reach out to the growing Hispanic population of voters. It will have to be a multi-faceted voter outreach program, while at the same time isolating the growth of illegal immigration, which in turn results (in a decade or so) more Hispanic voters.

As you can see, this will take some finesse.

Or, the GOP can write off most of the Hispanic vote and try to isolate the effects of their numbers to a few states.

There is danger to the Democrats as well, since too much pandering to African-American and Hispanic voters will label them as the NON-white party.

But, for now, President Obama has the advantage going into 2012 and you won’t be seeing too much GOP Presidential campaigning in California.