A new
Washington Post/ABC News poll that shows half of likely Hispanic voters don’t believe it matters which party wins control of the Senate in the midterms elections, while 30 percent said they thought it would be a good thing if the GOP won.
“This is a demographic, we will remind you, that voted 71-27 for President Obama just two years ago,” writes Post reporter Nia-Malika Henderson.
Hispanics’ surveyed were much more in line with independents, not Democrats, according to the Post, which noted that 76 percent of Hispanics held a negative view of the economy.
Forty-three percent of the Democratic Party view the economy positively.
Holding views more similar to independents than Democrats makes the Latino vote less predictable than in past elections, according to the
International Business Times.
A couple of other factors also make this year’s Election Day predictions muddy.
Hispanic voters consistently have a lower turnout at elections than both their black and white counterparts. Additionally, there are only a handful of states with enough Hispanics to impact the election’s outcome, the Times notes, explaining that’s the reason President Barack Obama has delayed executive action on immigration.
He fears doing so “could hurt Democrats’ chances in November’s elections,” according to the Times.
Breitbart News writer Ben Shapiro cautions the GOP not to “misinterpret” the situation.
Conservative Hispanics do not believe in amnesty and conservative Hispanics are most likely to vote in midterms, according to Shapiro. “Presidential Hispanics,” as he characterizes Hispanics most likely to show up in a presidential election, tend to vote Democrat, for a variety of issues, not just amnesty.
“Which means that the best electoral strategy for Republicans would not be to move toward legalization of millions more Hispanics who are not conservative, but to identify those Hispanics who are either conservative or open to conservatism,” Shapiro says.
“In other words, start thinking like Republicans — treating Hispanics as individuals rather than members of a homogeneous group — rather than Democrats. The immigration issue is obviously important to many Hispanics, just as it is important to many Americans.
“But winning vast swaths of Hispanic voters to conservatism isn’t simply an amnesty proposal away.”