… We recently conducted a survey in ten competitive congressional districts in California to gain better insight into Latino voting behavior and how Republicans might appeal to this growing sector of the electorate. The most important finding in this data – and in other data we have seen – is [...] Read more »
The Latest Exercise in ‘Blue Texas’ Wishful Thinking
Texas electoral politics tend to elicit sensationalism. Jeb Bush has suggested the Lone Star state, which voted for Romney by 16 points in 2012, could somehow turn blue in 2016; Ted Cruz, who doesn’t even favor comprehensive immigration reform, similarly said that new Hispanic voters would turn Texas blue and [...] Read more »
Targeting Texas
While the Republican Party struggles to resolve fratricidal conflict over gay marriage and immigration reform, there is another elephant in the room: Texas, the last big-state bastion of the right. Neglected by national Democrats since 1992, when Bill Clinton’s campaign decided to write it off, Texas has emerged as a [...] Read more »
The GOP’s Hispanic problem
… After nearly a year of breathless reports about how Latinos were going to trip over themselves to get to the polls and vote against Mitt Romney’s hard-line immigration stance — remember Time magazine’s Spanish-language cover “Yo Decido”? — the reality is less dramatic. … According to the Census Bureau, the [...] Read more »
Love Thy Stranger as Thyself
… Some of the most enthusiastic endorsements of the new immigration bill have come from traditional evangelicals, who insist that reform “respects the God-given dignity of every person.” … Evangelicals’ growing support for immigration reform suggests an important shift in how conservative Protestants — who policed the boundaries of our [...] Read more »
Many Americans Express Bias against Mexican Immigrants
… This nationwide Chicago Council survey, released on May 6, 2013, reveals support for some variation of immigration reform, similar to other recent polls. But there is still a lot of grass-roots work to be done to break down stereotypes. Half of Americans overstate unauthorized immigration levels into the United [...] Read more »
Immigration Reform: GOP’s big chance to deliver on Latino outreach
Recent elections demonstrate that immigration is a mobilizing issue for Latino voters. We can be sure that Congressional action, or inaction, on the current comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) bill will factor in to Latino voting decisions in 2014 and beyond. Our recent polling finds a majority of Latino voters, 58%, [...] Read more »
New National Latino Health Care Survey Results
A new poll of Latino/Hispanic adults strongly suggests that the Federal Government needs to do much more outreach to Latinos regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The poll, commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico, and impreMedia and administered by [...] Read more »
How Immigration Reform and Demographics Could Change Presidential Math
A bill to allow unauthorized immigrants to gain citizenship carries electoral risks and rewards for the Republican Party. On the one hand, if the bill were passed, some of those immigrants would eventually vote. Roughly 80 percent of illegal immigrants are Hispanic, and about 10 percent are Asian — groups [...] Read more »
Wealth Gap Among Races Widened Since Recession
Millions of Americans suffered a loss of wealth during the recession and the sluggish recovery that followed. But the last half-decade has proved far worse for black and Hispanic families than for white families, starkly widening the already large gulf in wealth between white Americans and most minority groups, according [...] Read more »