Latinos increasingly abandoning GOP

[babylonsister]

Latinos increasingly abandoning GOP

by Frank James, updated at 1:56 pm

Just about every student of American politics knows that when President Bush entered the White House in 2000, he hoped to realign American politics by attracting more minorities to the Republican fold, particularly Latinos who, as voters, share some of the same characteristics as conservative Republicans-strong religious affiliation and anti-abortion beliefs among them.

But while Bush and his chief political strategist Karl Rove made gains in 2004 in that area, those gains have largely eroded since then.

The Pew Hispanic Center has a new report that indicates Latinos are increasingly aligning with the Democratic Party, mirroring a shift in party affiliation that his happening generally in the U.S.

As Pew says of its findings:

The gains that the Republican Party had been making this decade in partisan affiliation among Latinos have dissipated in the past year, according to a new Pew Hispanic Center survey of Latino registered voters. The Democratic-over-Republican partisan affiliation edge (identifiers and leaners included), which had been 33 percentage points in 1999, then fell to 21 percentage points by 2006, is now back up to 34 percentage points.

The report also examines the potential of Hispanics to be a swing voting block in the 2008 election. Though they make up only a relatively small share of the nationwide electorate, Hispanics comprise a larger share of voters in four of the six "swing states" that President Bush carried by margins of five percentage points or fewer in 2004 – New Mexico, Florida, Nevada and Colorado. The report presents state-by-state data on the most recent eligibility and turnout trends of the Latino electorate.

more...

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/12/latinos_increasingly_abandonin.html

[Kolesar]

1. Colorado has a demographic of nature-loving retirees in the double-digit percentages

When you think of how cruel the republicans have been to both Latinos and the environment, it is easy to see that why the GOP has fallen apart in Colorado. So be it.

[SharonAnn]

2. They never belonged with the GOP to begin with. Now the scales have fallen from their eyes.

And they see that the GOP stands for everything that hurts the Latinos and against everything that supports or helps them.

Fool them one, shame on you. Fool them twice, shame on them. I don't think there'll be any shame on them.