Latino voters overwhelmingly favored President Obama in this election, underscoring the enormous advantage that Democrats enjoy among this increasingly powerful segment of the electorate.
As the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza wrote, citing early National Exit Poll results:
“Republicans have a major Hispanic problem. Latinos are 10 percent of all voters nationwide and Obama is winning them by almost 40 ”” yes 4-0 ”” points. Given the growth in the Latino population over the past decade, Republicans simply can’t afford to lose the Hispanic vote that badly and remain a viable national party.”
A special election eve poll by the Latino Decisions firm and ImpreMedia, publisher of La Opinion and other Spanish-language newspapers, suggests that the Latino vote was skewed even more decisively for Obama than the National Exit Poll results show. Writing about its own polling results in an election night post, Latino Decisions said:
“So far, early exit poll data on Latinos reported by the National Exit Poll appears to be very flawed. For example, in Ohio the National Exit Poll (NEP) data among Latinos reports 56% vote for Obama. In contrast the ImpreMedia-Latino Decisions poll shows 82% for Obama. Likewise, the NEP Latino data in Virginia shows 53% for Obama while the ImpreMedia-Latino Decisions poll shows 66% Latino vote for Obama in VA.”
Latino Decisions polled 5,600 Latinos between Nov. 1 and 5 who were either early voters or who were confident they would vote in the national election.
The pollsters predicated based on that sample that Obama was likely to obtain a record-breaking percentage of the Latino vote: 75 percent nationally, surpassing the 72 percent of the Latino vote that Bill Clinton garnered in his 1996 reelection.
In contrast, Latino Decisions predicted that Republican Mitt Romney would win the support of only 23 percent of Latino voters.
ImpreMedia contributed to this report.
