After the 2012 election Mitt Romney’s postmortem focused on the size of his loss among Hispanics. Hispanics gave Obama 10,973,582 votes. They gave Mitt 4,183, 299. In other words Obama got 6,790, 283 more Hispanic votes that Mitt.
In the overall race Obama’s margin of victory was 6,059,707, less than his winning margin among Hispanics, which tells us that if we want to win in 2016 we need to do better among Hispanics.
As if the 2012 race wasn’t illustrative enough, the demographic is actually a lot more important than it was 4 years ago. In the first place, it’s the fastest growing voting bloc in America, and that’s something that’s projected to continue long past 2016. In the second place, Hispanic turnout was 48%, lower than that of any other significant group. It could have been a lot worse.
It’s clear that Obama getting 71% of Hispanics in 2012, a significantly larger percentage than Democrats normally get in a national election, was largely because of Mitt’s self-deportation statements. His stance on immigration might have increased the enthusiasm of Ann Coulter even more, if that’s possible, but it cost us millions of votes….and the election.
Note that Mitt wasn’t talking about mass deportation. He knows enough about economic reality to know that it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to implement and would require a significantly larger government to boot. What he WAS talking about was E-Verify and increased border security measures, things every Republican candidate is for. His unique sin was using the ‘D’ word. It was enough.
Now, enter The Donald saying things like “They’ve got to go.” He even wants to deport citizens fully legal under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
The result is that, as Matt Coulter noted in his post yesterday titled “Surprise, Hispanics Hate Trump,” Trump’s minus 51% in his favorables among Hispanics. Jeb Bush, of course, had the highest favorables in the demographic with a positive 11%. Marco was second with plus 7%. This, according to Gallup.
There are two major reasons why things are even worse than Trump being upside down so badly on favorables. Number 1, his talk of mass deportation, including a lot of children who are citizens, will stoke very high intensity that will cause Hispanic vote totals to go a lot higher than the 48% that voted in 2012. Number 2, Trump wants a process to let “the good ones” back in the country to become citizens, making him the stealth amnesty candidate in the race. Half-way intelligent Americans will recognize the boondoggle that kind of new bureaucracy will become and they will stay home, vote 3rd Party, or vote for the Democrat in the race.
Let’s say you’re living in America and everything you have is stored in your house or apartment, and someone comes along and says he’s going to use the force of the government to send you to far off lands where you don’t own a house or apartment and MAYBE you might be allowed to come back some day if he likes you. In the meantime you may not have the money to move all of your worldly possessions to another country or have a place to put them even if you did. Are the millions of Hispanics who CAN vote going to vote for YOU if you want to make your friends and neighbors, and maybe your family, leave the country? If it were to happen, do you think there might be some violent resistance to going?
What Hispanics want more than handouts is respect due them as human beings and as Americans, empathy, and the opportunity to achieve a better life in the future. A better educational system and school choice, such as Jeb achieved in Florida, can become a major wedge issue in the campaign.
The Gallup numbers suggest that Trump could come a lot closer to losing Hispanics 90 to 10 than to losing the traditional 60% to 65%. Something that would cost us an otherwise very winnable election and negatively impact any chance we might have in the future.
