Latino Decisions

    Recently, the GOP campaign consulting firm Ayres, McHenry, and Associates released a new poll sponsored by the Resurgent Republic —a GOP research and public affairs organization— and the Hispanic Leadership Network, an outreach effort of the right-of-center American Action Network. Both groups work for the election of additional Republicans to Congress and the defeat of President Obama.

    The poll, widely reported in the National Journal and other papers, purports to show significant weakness of President Obama among Latinos in important swing states of Colorado, Florida, and New Mexico.

    The central finding, that the President is currently underperforming his 2008 support among Latinos in those states, is consistent with our recent work nationwide. Nevertheless, in our view, the poll most clearly illustrates two things: 1) that amateurs with no familiarity with the Latino electorate frequently make large and methodologically important mistakes in how they poll; and 2) that the Republican brand is so severely compromised among Latinos that it may be their undoing in the 2012 election.

    First, Ayers/McHenry reports conducting a registered voter poll of Latinos, and yet report only 1-2% of all interviews are conducted in Spanish. Since 40% of Latino adult citizens are foreign born and speak Spanish as a first language, this number should be greeted with extreme skepticism. Though Ayers/McHenry reports that respondents had a choice of language, that very low representation of Spanish-preferring respondents demonstrates significant methodological problems in how they afforded the language choice.

    The result is an inherent conservative bias in all results that is driven by the characteristics of their resulting sample, which is too assimilated, too middle class, and too educated to be representative of the underlying population. To illustrate:

    Generation: In 2006, the Latino National Survey (the largest academic survey of the Latino population of the US ever conducted) estimated that foreign-born first generation respondents were 73.5% of Florida’s citizen registered population, 21.2% of Colorado’s registered citizens and 16.3% of New Mexico’s. By contrast, the Ayers/McHenry poll had only 59% of Florida’s respondents as foreign born, 10% in Colorado, and 7% in New Mexico. For all three states, foreign born first generation respondents are underrepresented in their data, by 9.3% to 14.2%.

    Income: The Current Population Survey estimates that 47.6% of Latino registered voters have household incomes above $50k, while the Ayers/McHenry poll finds 54% in Colorado and 56% in Florida earned more than $50k.

    Education: More telling is the education skew. The percent of respondents with a college education is 40% each in Colorado and Florida and 61% in Florida. According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (November 2010 supplement for registration and voting), only 25.1% of all registered Latino voters nationwide have completed college.

    Our conclusion is that the Ayers McHenry data demonstrates a significant conservative bias by over-interviewing later generation, more assimilated Latinos and under-representing more working class voters.

    The bias we suspect suggests that the results reported in the Ayers/McHenry poll shine a more favorable light on Latino-Republican relations. Even taking the data at face value, the news is, frankly, terrible for the GOP. If, as we suggest these results are actually tilted toward the GOP, then these poll results are disastrous news for Republicans.

    Ayers/McHenry report dissatisfaction with President Obama and, on this point, we agree. In all three states, voters are disappointed with the president. Majorities of all three find the president did not deliver on his promises to Hispanics, and that he is a weaker president than they had expected.

    In light of that result, the Democratic leanings of these registered voters—EVEN IN FLORIDA—are remarkable.

    The central problem for Republicans remains one that Latino Decisions highlighted some weeks ago, which is that Latinos are liberals and largely do not agree with Republicans on major issues.

    And on immigration, Democratic policy preferences like the Dream Act and comprehensive reform with a path to citizenship are strongly preferred to policy positions most often offered by GOP elected officials. Republicans, meanwhile, receive the lion’s share of the blame for inaction on immigration. Therefore, whether you believe the trends identified by the Resurgent Republic, we believe that there are far more challenges than opportunities for the GOP among Hispanic voters.