In 2012, polling by Latino Decisions found that Mitt Romney won the support of just 23 percent of Latino voters. In 2016, the Republican presidential candidate will need twice that support to win the White House.
The cause for the GOP’s “Latino deficit” is no secret and can largely be explained by two interrelated factors: Latinos are the growth segment of the electorate and just one Republican presidential candidate in the last six elections has won a majority of the popular vote.
To assess how these dynamics may play out in 2016, we use data from recent presidential elections to model the sizes of the Latino and Non-Latino segments of the electorate and these groups’ contribution to the GOP aggregate vote. CONT.
David Damore & Matt Barreto, Latino Decisions