January 27, 2009
By James G. Gimpel
Center for Immigration Studies
Backgrounders and Reports
Key Points
- Exit polls from Election Day indicated that President Barack Obama won 67 percent of the Latino vote, and John McCain 32 percent. This compares to estimates of Latino support for George W. Bush in the range of 39 percent or higher in 2004. In 2000, Bush is thought to have received 35 percent of the Latino vote. (full PDF of Report)
- The drop in support among Latinos for Republicans between 2004 and 2008 was part of a broad-based electoral movement away from the GOP, and was hardly specific to that demographic group. McCain received only 57 percent of the white male vote, compared with 62 percent for Bush in 2004, and McCain's 55 percent of regular church goers was significantly lower than Bush's 61 percent.
- Credible surveys indicate that the major policy concerns of Latinos were no different than the concerns of non-Latinos: The economy and jobs topped the list.
- There is little evidence that immigration policy was an influential factor in Latinos' choice between the two candidates once basic party predispositions are taken into account.
- McCain's consistent history of advocating a legalization program for illegal immigrants made no impression on Latino voters.
- McCain lost the Latino vote by a wide margin even in his home state of Arizona, 56 to 41 percent. This was in spite of widespread news coverage of his immigration stance in that state.
- In 2008, Latino voters supported the GOP ticket at levels above the usual 30 percent only when they resided in states that were already safely in GOP hands.
- The size of the Latino voting population should be kept in perspective alongside other subsets of the electorate. An estimated 11.8 million voters were of Latino ancestry, compared with 17 million African Americans, 19.7 million veterans, 23.6 million young people, 45 million conservatives, and 34 million born-again white Christians.
The 2008 presidential election provided yet another opportunity to assess stability and change in the basic partisan commitments of voters. For almost 10 years now, leading GOP strategists have suggested that the party is on its way to making lasting inroads with Latino voters. Unfortunately, the 2008 results indicate that the party is no closer to this goal now than it was when it started. Exit polls on Election Night indicated that President-Elect Obama won 67 percent of the Latino vote; performing a bit better among Latino women (68 percent) than among Latino men (64 percent). (Results can be viewed on the CNN Election Center 2008 website at the following address, accessed December 15, 2008: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1.) The Pew Research Center's national survey taken the weekend before Election Day showed virtually the same results: 32 percent for McCain and 68 percent for Obama.
The quixotic and costly Republican efforts to realign a large share of Latino voters have evidently been a failure, and for the reasons that I have identified in several previous CIS Backgrounders (Gimpel and Kaufmann 2001; Gimpel 2007; 2004). The Hispanic population consistently identifies by a margin of 2:1 with the Democratic Party, and it is heavily concentrated in places where the local Republican Party presence is weak - especially in larger cities and older suburbs.
Given that new voters learn their politics from those around whom they live and work, the Latino concentrations in the nation's most Democratic cities and counties provides little opportunity for regular exposure to anyone with Republican allegiance. In many of these locales, there are few Republican candidates even on the ballot. As I have indicated elsewhere, very few Latinos are migrating into Republican-heavy communities, where they might develop some affinity for the Grand Old Party's politics (Gimpel 2007). Notably, where you do find Latinos living among Republican majorities, they are stronger in their support for GOP candidates, but the gap in party identification stems precisely from the fact that there are far fewer of them residing in such locations.
The upshot of the steadiness of Latino support for the Democratic Party is that a campaign cannot sway Latinos, or any other group, by simply broadcasting a few ads, making an extra campaign stop, or by announcing a new policy vision - nor does it help much if you do it in a foreign language. The vast majority of voters, Latino or otherwise, are not sufficiently attentive to campaign activities for those efforts to pay significant dividends.
Among those who are most attentive to campaigns, outreach messages fall on unsympathetic ears. Some have suggested that voters are selectively attentive when they view campaign-related information, commonly screening out or sharply discounting news and advertising content that is discrepant with what they already believe (Taber and Lodge 2006; Taber, Lodge, and Glathar 2002; Faber and Storey 1984). This may be true, but a simpler account suggests that incoming content is filtered through the application of prior beliefs. A campaign ad for a candidate, for instance, is simply evaluated using different criteria by Republicans than it is by Democrats (Gerber and Green 1999, 206). Prior feelings and prejudices always come into play.
Whichever theory of biased learning is used to explicate it, the result is the same: stability in political attitudes rather than change even in the face of vigorous campaigning. No voter begins an election year as a blank slate, and one does not have to be a zealot to be resistant to new political arguments (Taber and Lodge 2006, 767).
Considering the entrenched Democratic Party loyalties of Latino registrants, the legions of Latinos who are noncitizens, and those who are citizens but remain unregistered and do not vote, surprisingly few Latinos are persuadable targets of campaign outreach. This is why no reasonable amount of party effort will turn them in any short amount of time.
Republicans and the Latino Vote in Battleground States
Latino support for the McCain-Palin ticket varies by state because this population does not have the same socioeconomic profile at every location. Moreover, Latino voters are no different from any other voter, subject to favorite son appeals, as McCain did best in Arizona, winning an estimated 41 percent of the Hispanic vote, while losing to Obama in the Illinois Senator's home state: 72 percent to 27 percent (see Table 1). The fact that McCain won as much as 27 percent of Latino votes in Illinois testifies to the durability of party identification in determining vote choice. Republicans can count on a small but loyal base of Hispanic supporters year in and year out even when the playing field is tilted against them.
