Republicans Lost Ground With Latinos In Midterms: After Gains in '04, GOP Stumbled on Immigration

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Republicans Lost Ground With Latinos In Midterms
After Gains in 2004, GOP Stumbled on Immigration
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 18, 2006; Page A03

Two years ago, Latino voters gravitated in larger-than-ever numbers toward President Bush, the former governor of Texas, a Mexican border state, and his brother Jeb, the loquacious Florida governor who speaks fluent Spanish.

How times have changed.

Pollsters generally agree that the same voters abandoned the president's party in droves during last week's elections, with Latinos giving the GOP only 30 percent of their vote as strident House immigration legislation inspired by Republicans and tough-talking campaign ads by conservative candidates roiled the community. It was a 10-point drop from the lowest estimated Latino vote percentage two years ago, and a 14-point drop from the highest.

Depending on who did the counting, pollsters said in 2004 that Latinos handed GOP candidates between 40 percent and 44 percent of their vote -- a historic Republican windfall -- as the Bush brothers appealed to their socially conservative views on abortion and same-sex marriage.

"I think you have to look at the Republican effort on immigration as a catastrophic mistake in a year when they made many mistakes," said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, formerly the New Democrat Network. "They now know that the Republican Party is hostile to Hispanics, which is something they didn't know two years ago. That's a big burden for them to overcome."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/17/AR2006111701641.html

[lcordero2]

1. this is what actually happened

they were suppressing the Latino vote so that they actually looked like they were making progress.