November 10, 2024 Breaking News, Latest News, and Videos

Sleeping Giant Stirs As Latino Voters Win For Obama:

Weeks before this month’s election, President Obama began to realize his only chance for victory: Awaken the so-called sleeping giant of American politics, the approximately 50.5 million Latinos or Spanish-speaking U.S. residents, 26 million of whom are eligible to vote.

“If I win,” he said in late October, “it will be because of Latinos.”

Obama and his private pollsters, then, may have had a clue that something was happening among Hispanic voters, those whose ethnic roots lie in Mexico, Central and South America, as well as Spain and Portugal.

Something important was indeed occurring. So now there’s the possibility the same effect which turned California from a generally Republican state to a reliably Democratic one in presidential politics may spread elsewhere. This state changed from mostly red, in television parlance, to almost exclusively blue after the anti-illegal immigrant 1994 Proposition 187 passed handily, threatening millions with loss of public schooling, emergency room care and other services.

Within three years of its passage, more than 2.5 million Latinos became naturalized citizens and registered to vote here, almost all of them solidly Democratic then and now.

What happened Tuesday was an extension both of that and the 2010 “Harry Reid effect,” in which all supposedly reliable polls showed Reid, the Senate majority leader, losing his reelection bid to arch-conservative Republican Sharron Angle, a Tea Party-backed candidate.

But those surveys, measuring the sentiments of what they called “likely voters,” badly underestimated the number of Latinos who would turn out. Reid, who went into Election Day trailing by five points in the polls, won by about six points.

This year, the last pre-election versions of polls put Republican Mitt Romney ahead by anywhere from one percent to three percent in the national popular vote. But when the final popular vote comes in, Obama will almost certainly be even or ahead in that call, in addition to the Electoral College vote he clinched on Election Night.

The key for him was among Latinos.

“When you look at polls in any state that’s competitive with a big component of the electorate being Latino, you tend to see that they tend to underestimate the Latino vote,” University of Nevada political science Prof. David Damore told a reporter.

Added Matt Barrero of the University of Washington and the Latino Decisions polling outfit, “Pollsters missed a component of the correct proportion of Spanish interviews. They completely underestimated a growing part of the electorate, and this is the part that is most heavily Democratic.”

Barrero’s outfit predicted that Latinos nationally would vote for Obama over Romney by about a 3-1 margin. It was greater than that in swing states like Nevada and Colorado, not to mention California.

Obama won in 2008 by getting record numbers of minority and youth voters to turn out. He won about 80 percent of non-white votes that year, while losing the white vote to John McCain by 6 percent. This year, Obama won not much more than 35 percent of white votes, but even more minorities turned out than four years ago. In an increasingly diverse country, where Latinos are the No. 2 ethnic group behind only Caucasians, that was enough. The Latino vote was about 25 percent larger than in 2008.

“We knew Latinos would vote in record numbers,” said Eliseo Medina, national head of the Service Employees International Union, whose membership is heavily Hispanic. “There is no longer any doubt we are a political force to be reckoned with.”

And because virtually all Latino citizens whose families have been in this country for two generations or less have some blood tie to at least one illegal immigrant, the treatment of illegals became the central issue for them. While Romney was calling for “self-deportation” and campaigning with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the chief author of Arizona’s SB 1070, the racial profiling law detested by almost all Latinos, Obama granted administrative relief to as many as 4 million youthful illegals.

That helped make up for the letdown his Latino supporters suffered when he failed to produce a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented.

But Latinos voted not just on immigration. “We certainly don’t need any more profiling laws like AB 1070,” said Medina. “But we also don’t need repeal of a healthcare law that will cover 9 million more Latinos and we don’t need a tax system that rewards the 1 percent. As much as some candidates manipulate their rhetoric, we can read between the lines.”

That all spelled another four-year term for Obama and guarantees both parties will pay even more attention to Latino issues than they have. It also means polling firms like Gallup and Rasmussen, whose readings were mistaken, need to go back to the drawing board.

in Opinion
<>Related Posts

Opinion: Fact Check: Why Vote Yes on Measure QS

November 1, 2024

November 1, 2024

Despite living in a famously progressive region, Santa Monicans are not immune from the same political misinformation and disinformation that...

SM.a.r.t Column: Lack of Oversight and No Accountability

October 31, 2024

October 31, 2024

S.M.a.r.t. periodically invites guest columnists to write opinion articles on topics of particular interests to our readers. Below is an...

SM.a.r.t Column: “Help! I’ve Fallen, and I …!!”, Cries Santa Monica!

October 25, 2024

October 25, 2024

Maybe fallen, but slipping for sure from being a desirable beachfront community that served all equally, the local residents who...

SM.a.r.t. Column: Vote

October 13, 2024

October 13, 2024

In a polarized country or City every vote counts. Regardless of which side of any issue or candidate you support,...

SM.a.r.t Column: Fact-Checking Election-Season Windbaggery

October 6, 2024

October 6, 2024

Claim: The state is requiring Santa Monica to build 9,000 apartments.Answer: Partially true, partially false. Santa Monica has a pretty...

SM.a.r.t. Column: Public Safety and Traffic Enforcement Can Help Save Lives and Revitalize Santa Monica’s Economy

September 29, 2024

September 29, 2024

We wholeheartedly endorse the candidates below for Santa Monica City Council. Their leading campaign platform is for increased safety in...

SM.a.r.t Column: Crime in Santa Monica: A Growing Concern and the Need for Prioritizing Public Safety

September 22, 2024

September 22, 2024

By Michael Jolly Over the past six months, Santa Monica has experienced a concerning rise in crime, sparking heated discussions...

SM.a.r.t Column: Ten New Commandments

September 15, 2024

September 15, 2024

Starting last week,  the elementary school students of Louisiana will all face mandatory postings of the biblical Ten Commandments in...

SM.a.r.t Column: Santa Monica’s Next City Council

September 8, 2024

September 8, 2024

In the next general election, this November 5th, Santa Monica residents will be asked to vote their choices among an...

SM.a.r.t Column: Part II: The Affordability Crisis: Unmasking California’s RHNA Process and Its Role in Gentrification

September 2, 2024

September 2, 2024

Affordability: An Income and Available Asset Gap Issue, Not a Supply Issue (Last week’s article revealed how state mandates became...

SM.a.r.t Column: Part 1: The Affordability Crisis: Unmasking California’s RHNA Process and Its Role in Gentrification

August 26, 2024

August 26, 2024

In the world of economic policy, good intentions often pave the way to unintended consequences. Nowhere is this more evident...

SM.a.r.t Column: They Want to Build a Wall

August 18, 2024

August 18, 2024

Every once in a while, a topic arises that we had previously written about but doesn’t seem to go away....

SM.a.r.t Column: Sharks vs. Batteries – Part 5 of 5

August 11, 2024

August 11, 2024

This is the last SMart article in an expanding  5 part series about our City’s power, water, and food prospects....

SM.a.r.t Column: Your Home’s First Battery Is in Your Car

August 4, 2024

August 4, 2024

This is the fourth in a series of SM.a.r.t articles about food, water, and energy issues in Santa Monica. You...

SM.a.r.t Column: Food Water and Energy Part 3 of 4

July 28, 2024

July 28, 2024

Our previous two S.M.a,r,t, articles talked about the seismic risks to the City from getting its three survival essentials: food,...