Hispanic Panic
Currie, Duncan
Hispanic Panic Back to square uno para el GOP. BY DUNCAN CURRIE Congressman Mario DiazBalart, a Cuban-American Republican from the Miami area, puts it bluntly: “We have a very, very...
...He fears that a replay of the 2006 and 2007 immigration spats would “fracture” the GOP and worsen its image among Hispanics...
...Yet in late 2007, Pew reported that the gap had swelled to 34 percentage points...
...Indeed, the 1970 to 2000 decline in fertility in Mexico is one of the fastest ever recorded...
...Should their three children be counted as Hispanics...
...Duncan Currie is managing editor of The American...
...In Texas, Obama won Hispanics by 28 percentage points (63-35...
...Just 20 years ago, says Amandi, Cubans represented around 90 percent of Florida’s Hispanic voters...
...According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the partisan affi liation gap among Latinos shrank from 33 percentage points in 1999 to 21 percentage points in 2006...
...But that takes a while,” says Gimpel...
...For “network effects,” think reunifi - cation of extended families—a process that means growth here “may continue to accelerate for some time, even as population growth in the two countries continues to converge...
...During that period, the Hispanic population grew by roughly 24.3 percent, while the total U.S...
...Hispanics are now fueling population growth in unlikely places, such as Iowa...
...Even in McCain’s home state of Arizona, Obama won Hispanics by 15 percentage points (56-41...
...The immigration debate was catastrophically divisive for Republicans,” says a GOP Senate staffer (who is Hispanic...
...He believes this “had a devastating effect” on the party’s standing with Latino voters...
...In 2008, Latinos accounted for 13 percent of the electorate in Colorado, 15 percent in Nevada, and 41 percent in New Mexico...
...Hispanics “had a median age of 27.6, compared with the population as a whole at 36.6...
...Many blame the debate over comprehensive immigration reform, which produced fi erce legislative showdowns in 2006 and 2007...
...Will slowing population growth contribute to slower increases in emigration rates in the future...
...What explains that...
...society...
...Indeed, intermarriage is making “Hispanic” a slippery label...
...According to the exit polls, Obama ran 16 percentage points ahead of Kerry among Nevada Hispanics and 13 percentage points ahead of Kerry among New Mexico Hispanics...
...The numbers in Florida were especially striking...
...Until they do, Diaz-Balart says the Republicans “are really in bad shape...
...As Latinos climb the economic ladder, they are more likely to support Republicans...
...In other words, between 2004 and 2008, the Hispanic presidential vote in Florida swung by 27 percentage points...
...In some parts of Iowa, where the white population is shrinking, Hispanics are supplying all the growth,” the Muscatine Journal reported in August, noting that Hispanic women have a higher fertility rate and that “young white Iowans are moving out of the state right when they’re about ready to start families...
...In a September 2007 Washington Post column, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson noted that “a substantial shift of Hispanic voters toward the Democrats” in fi ve states—Florida, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico—“could make the national political map unwinnable for Republicans...
...But immigration is hardly the only factor driving Latinos away from Republicans...
...He also makes a broader point: As long as the steady infl ow of Hispanics to the United States consists predominantly of low-income, low-education immigrants, the GOP will have a difficult time making serious gains among Hispanic voters...
...It appears that Obama also did noticeably better among Florida Cubans than John Kerry did four years ago, thanks to the younger generation of Cuban Americans, though McCain still received a huge majority of the Cuban vote...
...The U.S...
...What happened...
...Just a few years ago, it seemed as if Latinos might be opening up to the GOP...
...Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, for example, is married to a Mexican-American woman...
...Gimpel observes that Hispanic immigrants tend to settle in cities and urban areas that are heavily Democratic...
...The Census Bureau estimates that Hispanics were responsible for about half of America’s population growth between 2000 and 2006...
...The Pew Hispanic Center reports that the increase was 5 percentage points in Colorado, 5 percentage points in Nevada, and 9 percentage points in New Mexico...
...In his recent book on immigration, British journalist and former World Trade Organization adviser Philippe Legrain stressed that “successive generations are blending in with the rest of U.S...
...It was the tone of the debate,” says Diaz-Balart...
...BY DUNCAN CURRIE Congressman Mario DiazBalart, a Cuban-American Republican from the Miami area, puts it bluntly: “We have a very, very serious problem...
...Among other things, a decline in the relative strength of the Cuban vote, which remains heavily Republican...
...According to data cited by Legrain, “whereas only 8 percent of foreign-born Latinos marry nonLatinos, 32 percent of second generation and 57 percent of third-generation Latinos marry outside their ethnic group...
...The tone of some Republicans was offensive to the vast majority of Hispanics...
...As economists Gordon Hanson and Craig McIntosh of the University of California, San Diego, have written, population growth in Mexico has decreased dramatically...
...Indeed, according to Bendixen & Associates, non-Cubans now account for a majority of Latino voters in the Sunshine State...
...And the self-infl icted wounds of the immigration debate have not yet healed...
...He is referring to the GOP’s lack of support among Hispanics, which could derail the party’s future presidential hopes...
...In 2007, U.S...
...The Census Bureau has projected that Hispanics’ share of the total population will grow from 15.5 percent in 2010 to 24.4 percent in 2050...
...In each of these states, Latinos made up a signifi cantly bigger portion of the electorate in 2008 than they did in 2004...
...James Gimpel, an immigration expert at the University of Maryland, predicts that Arizona and even Texas will soon become “blue” states thanks to their large and rapidly growing Hispanic populations...
...Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi of Bendixen & Associates, which specializes in Hispanic public opinion, says that “the Hispanic vote played a crucial role, if not the determinant role” in helping Obama carry Florida, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico...
...Over time, as Latinos become more assimilated and see their incomes rise, they may look more favorably on the Republicans...
...Party building is territorial...
...All fi ve of those states went for George W. Bush in 2004, and all but Arizona went for Barack Obama in 2008...
...Almost 34 percent of the Hispanic population was younger than 18, compared with 25 percent of the total population...
...Absent network effects (and holding labor demand constant), the answer would appear to be yes...
...In 2008, Hispanics were 16 percent of the electorate in Arizona and 20 percent of the electorate in Texas...
...What about Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico...
...An increasingly large share of Florida’s Hispanic population is made up of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Colombians, Venezuelans, Argentines, and other non-Cubans...
...Of course, demographic forecasts are often unreliable, and there is no guarantee that Hispanic population growth will continue at its current pace...
...Latino community is quite heterogeneous, and it would be misleading to portray “the Hispanic vote” as a monolith...
...But the constant infl ux of low-skilled Hispanic immigrants benefi ts the Democrats, says Gimpel, which means the GOP is fi ghting an uphill battle...
...population grew by only 6.1 percent...
...According to the exit polls, Bush won Florida Hispanics by 12 percentage points (56-44) in 2004, while John McCain lost Florida Hispanics by 15 percentage points (57-42) in 2008...
...In Colorado, Obama actually ran 7 percentage points behind Kerry among Hispanics, but he still won 61 percent of the Latino vote and ran 8 percentage points ahead of Kerry among white voters...
Vol. 14 • November 2008 • No. 10
