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Bush increases support among Hispanic voters, captures 44 percent
BY GROMER JEFFERS JR.
The Dallas Morning News
Posted on Wed, Nov. 03, 2004
DALLAS - (KRT) - President Bush's success in reaching more Hispanic voters than he did in 2000 may result in that group becoming a key cog in the Republican base, political analysts say.
Exit polls show that the president received 44 percent of the nearly 7.5 million Hispanics who voted in the presidential election.
That's better than the 35 percent of 5.9 million Hispanics voters Bush won four years ago, though at least one other poll suggests his surge among Hispanics may not be as high.
With 53 percent of the Hispanic vote, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry was still the clear choice. But experts say Bush's strong showing signals a trend that should worry Democrats.
"I would certainly advise them to be much more aggressive with Hispanic outreach and to start working earlier," said Adam Segal, director of the Hispanic Voter Project at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. "This election is further evidence that Hispanics are a critical voting bloc that both parties are competing for."
Since the beginning of his re-election campaign, Bush and the Republican Party had stepped up their outreach effort to Hispanic voters.
Their Spanish-language television ads were complemented by aggressive campaigning by Republicans, including Dallas lawyer George P. Bush, who is the president's nephew and whose mother was born in Mexico.
In Texas, where popular Democrat Henry Cisneros was an early supporter of Kerry, exit polls show Bush got 59 percent of the Hispanic vote.
"The president's message clearly resonated with Hispanic voters on a host of issues," said Lindsay Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. "And we worked hard on our outreach effort."
Democrats said privately that they were proud of their outreach effort but conceded they would have to work harder to secure more Hispanic voters.
In a poll taken before the election, the Hispanic Alliance for Progress Institute found that jobs and taxes were the No. 1 issue facing Hispanic voters, followed closely by national security and social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
"The great big Bush advantage was on the social issues," said Michael McKenna, a pollster for the Hispanic group.
The institute's poll predicted that Bush would win 44 percent of the overall Hispanic vote.
But Andy Hernandez, a political scientist at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, said Democrats still had a strong edge in getting Hispanic votes. He cited an exit poll by the William C. Velasquez Institute that showed Hispanics favored Kerry 2-1.
But he added that Kerry probably missed an opportunity to attract more Hispanic voters by not constantly addressing issues such as immigration, workplace safety and the minimum wage.
"It was a Bush success, but also a Kerry failure," he said.
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