Latino Voting in the 2008 Election: Part of a Broader Electoral Movement

The 2008 presidential election provided yet another opportunity to assess stability and change in the basic partisan commitments of voters. For almost 10 years now, leading GOP strategists have suggested that the party is on its way to making lasting inroads with Latino voters. Unfortunately, the 2008 results indicate that the party is no closer to this goal now than it was when it started. Exit polls on Election Night indicated that President-Elect Obama won 67 percent of the Latino vote; performing a bit better among Latino women (68 percent) than among Latino men (64 percent). (Results can be viewed on the CNN Election Center 2008 website at the following address, accessed December 15, 2008: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1.) The Pew Research Center’s national survey taken the weekend before Election Day showed virtually the same results: 32 percent for McCain and 68 percent for Obama.

The quixotic and costly Republican efforts to realign a large share of Latino voters have evidently been a failure, and for the reasons that I have identified in several previous CIS Backgrounders (Gimpel and Kaufmann 2001; Gimpel 2007; 2004). The Hispanic population consistently identifies by a margin of 2:1 with the Democratic Party, and it is heavily concentrated in places where the local Republican Party presence is weak — especially in larger cities and older suburbs.