2016 Candidates Need More Than Spanish To Win The Latino Vote
Sharing your message in Spanish might help build Latino support for your presidential bid -- but it's no guarantee.
As the number of eligible Latino voters grows, candidates are paying more attention to the group, and many 2016 contenders have been promoting themselves in Spanish on the campaign trail. Those communications are important for the Spanish-dominant segment of voters, but, overall, candidates' positions on the issues are what Latinos will care about most on Election Day
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Of the declared 2016 candidates thus far, only Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Ben Carson have extensive Spanish-language versions of their websites.
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Benitez pointed to Clinton's recent town hall with young undocumented immigrants in Las Vegas as one of the types of interactions candidates should be having with the community.
"She set a very high bar for other candidates to follow," he said. "She not only met with the members of the community that are directly affected, but she obviously made this a priority in her campaign and hopefully in her presidency if she gets elected."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/22/2016-election-outreach-spanish-latino-voters_n_7309294.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
That is, Poppy BUSH with his grandkids as "the little brown ones" was too Eastern to connect with Hispanics. I never want to say anything positive about Shrub and am not doing so here but he, with his few and fractured words in Spanish, connected best with that frivolous or greedy (the Repukes call them "aspirational"
segment of Hispanics (the newer immigrants), simply because of his (I hate to say it: ) COMMON TOUCH, the hail-fellow-well-met crap, yes the have-a-beer-with, especially the winky-dinky smile and abrazo (hug). It ain't the Spanish, it's the communicating of LIKING, accepting.
Jeb Crow Shrub speaks absolutely great Spanish, but is more focused on his wingnut policies ("Nothing" to offer minorities), colder and harder in his presentations. Jeb Crow Shrub is more "foreign" (international) with his many Cuban business partners and with Mexicans-from-Mexico through his wife. 
Somewhat tangential: It's a wingnut canard that Dems favor legalization for the purpose of harvesting votes. Silly as it sounds, but not silly enough for many wingnuts, illegals are not eligible to vote. But the more serious point is that the poor undocumented immigrants are under unimaginable pressure and fear just to survive, don't know the politics, and voting is way off their radar. Actual voters probably nearly unanimously KNOW ENGLISH. The sprinkling of other languages words favored by candidates are just that, sprinkles, like candy sprinkles on ice cream.
As for DUKAKIS having done well with Hispanics, fine, but not the point "not enough of them." The real problem is that droves of eligible Hispanics DON'T VOTE. African Americans focused on VOTING as the key.