Black Star News
September 2, 2015
Donald
Trump’s campaign, as well as the emphasis of most of the GOP 2016
field, is a narrow-casted appeal towards aggrieved White voters.
Yet
the political wisdom of limiting the GOP’s appeal to this shrinking
cohort of the electorate is a questionable prospect at best, given
demographic realities that are
already in place.
As
Republican pollster Whit Ayres wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed,
“Republicans can’t win a presidential election by trying to grab a
larger piece of a shrinking
pie. That helps explain why Republicans have lost the popular vote in
five of the past six presidential elections. If America’s demographics
still looked the way they did in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was voted into
office, John McCain and Mitt Romney would
have won the White House.”
And
as Michael Gerson wrote in a recent column blasting Trump’s emphasis on
aggrieved White voters, “declaring war on demography is like declaring
war on gravity — all
your victories are temporary.”
In
fact, based on the most likely 2016 electoral composition and turnout
scenarios, the Republican nominee will need the votes of 47% percent of
Latinos nationally to
win a majority of the 2016 popular vote, with similar “Latino voter
thresholds” needed in likely battleground states of CO, FL, NV, NM, OH,
and VA.
Even
if a GOP candidate wins an historically high level of the White vote –
60%, a level not reached by Republicans in a presidential election since
the 1980s – he or
she would have to win 42% of the Latino vote to win the popular vote
nationwide (read the Latino Decisions analysis and methodology here).
After
George W. Bush received approximately 40% of the Latino vote in his
2004 re-election, the Republican Party tarnished its brand image among
Latino voters by scuttling
comprehensive immigration reform in Congress during Bush’s second term.
The
toll was such that even pro-reform candidate John McCain lost Latino
voters by a 67%-31% margin to Barack Obama in 2008. In 2012, after Mitt
Romney embraced hardline
immigration stances such as “self-deportation,” President Obama won the
even larger Latino electorate by an even greater margin – 75%-23%
according to Election Eve polling from Latino Decisions.
Now,
the Republican front-runner is threatening to underperform even
Romney’s historically low levels among Latino voters. New polling from
ABC News/Washington Post captures
how Latinos view the two parties’ presidential frontrunners in starkly
different ways.
Among
Latinos, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has a net negative
favorability of 67 percentage points, with only 15% of Latinos viewing
him favorably and 82% viewing
him unfavorably. Meanwhile, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has
a net positive favorability rating of 41 percentage points among
Latinos, with 68% of Latinos viewing her favorably and 27% unfavorably.
The Trump Effect: Harming the GOP’s Chances of Keeping Senate Control Past 2016
The
Trump Effect is not only threatening the GOP’s prospects in the
presidential race, but also in competitive 2016 Senate races and others
down ballot. As Tierney Sneed
writes in a Talking Points Memo article titled, “Trump's Latino Bashing
Risks GOP Senate Hopes In 3 Key States”:
“Already
Trump and his anti-immigrant rhetoric is becoming a flashpoint in the
down-the-ballot campaigns. The direction he is pulling his fellow
Republicans could put
in jeopardy the GOP's majority in the Senate, as some of the cycle's
most competitive races are taking place in states with heavy Latino
populations.
“Of
the five states that had the largest share of Hispanic voters in 2012
cycle, Florida, Colorado and Nevada are holding what are expected to be
extremely contentious
Senate races. And already, some of the candidates in those races have
been expected to weigh in on Trump's antics, which involve labeling
Mexicans ‘rapists’ and calling for the end of birth citizenship.”
And
Nevada’s leading political commentator, Jon Ralston, writes a new
column titled, “Trump’s Rhetoric Damaging Heck’s Chances,” that captures
how Trump and his nativist
views are an “anchor” on Nevada’s likely Republican Senate contender,
Joe Heck. Writes Ralston:
“Just
as Trump’s gravitational force is pulling many of his foes to the right
on immigration, his incendiary rhetoric also could prove to be an
anchor on GOP candidates
such as Heck, who previously has boasted of his relatively strong
showing among Hispanics.
"But
running for Congress against embarrassingly inept Democratic
challengers is not the same as competing statewide in a nationally
watched U.S. Senate race seen by most
observers as a toss-up or perhaps leaning slightly toward a woman,
ex-Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, who would be the first
Latina senator in U.S. History.
"That
last fact is enough to energize segments of Nevada’s Hispanic
community, which could make up as much as 20 percent of the electorate
come November 2016. So Heck
has very little margin for error in trying to do better with that
cohort than other recent GOP statewide candidates.
"…
So Trump’s belligerence on illegal immigrants – “they have to go,” he
told Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” – poses a clear and present danger
to Heck, who will have
a difficult time winning the race if Hispanic turnout reaches record
levels and he cannot fare better than Romney or Heller.”
“Restrictionist
immigration views held by Republican candidates are not just
threatening the party’s chances of taking back the White House, but
undermining their chances
in Senate and House races as well. Republicans need to realize that
the U.S. electorate’s demographic changes are not theoretical or
happening far in the future: they’re here now. They’re here today.
Unless the Republican Party finds a way to compete for
these voters, they simply won’t be able to win these races,” said Lynn
Tramonte, Deputy Director of America’s Voice.
Follow Frank Sharry and America’s Voice on Twitter: @FrankSharry and @AmericasVoice
America's Voice -- Harnessing the power of American voices and American values to win common sense immigration reform
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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