Hispanics Turning Back to Democrats Demographics

Over at Donkey Rising, Ruy Texeira has a great discussion of the political shifts among the rapidly-growing Hispanic/Latino voter demographic - of obvious importance to the West.

Consider the results of the new Democracy Corps poll of Hispanic voters. In that poll, Hispanic voters who express a preference for the 2006 Congressional elections currently give the Democrats a 68-32 edge in the two-party vote. The rest of the poll tells us why Hispanic support for the Democrats has become so lop-sided.

Hispanic voters give Republicans an average feeling thermometer (0=coldest; 100=warmest) score of 48 and Democrats an average score of 60. And 63 percent of these voters identify with or lean towards the Democratic party compared to just 31 percent who identify with or lean towards the Republicans.

Not only is there a shift underway, but there are methodological problems that have overstated the shift toward the GOP in 2004.

These figures do indicate that 2004 was a good year for the GOP among Hispanic voters in comparison to the recent past. But the extent of GOP progress is sometimes exaggerated by using 1996 as a benchmark for comparison to both 2000 and 2004. This is problematic not only because Clinton’s 72-21 margin in 1996 was anomalously high, but also because Hispanics were defined differently in that year than they have been subsequently.

This difference is not widely understood and deserves some explanation. Here is the basic story: prior to 1998, the exit polls used a single race question (“Are you white, black, Hispanic/Latino.....”) to capture Hispanics, as opposed to a race question plus another question on whether the respondent is of Hispanic descent or not, which has been included on exit polls since 1998. The change in methodology allows the exit polls to capture more Hispanics, but, since those Hispanics who do not identify themselves as Hispanic in the race question tend to be more conservative than those who do identify themselves as Hispanic in that question, it makes the expanded sample of Hispanics post-1998 more conservative than the pre-1998 samples.

Got that? Therefore to compare pre-1998 Hispanic exit poll figures to post-1998 Hispanic exit poll figures is a little bit like comparing apples and oranges. A better comparison can be obtained by looking at just the Hispanics who self-identify in the race question, since that is common to all the exit polls.

With such a comparison, 1996 remains the high point, but the fall-off to 2000-04 is less severe. Indeed, the Hispanic presidential vote, defined in this way, has averaged 64-35 Democratic in these two elections, actually more strongly Democratic than in the two Reagan elections of 1980-84, when the Hispanic presidential vote averaged 61-35 Democratic.

And in the next election following Reagan’s relatively good performances among Hispanics–1988–the Hispanic presidential vote moved sharply Democratic to 69-30. Don’t be surprised if we see the same kind of trend in 2008.

Read the entire piece at Donkey Rising.

Kari Chisholm | June 28, 2005 | Comment on This Post (1 so far) Permalink: Hispanics Turning Back to Democrats Demographics

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