Showing posts with label 2012 Swing States. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2012 Swing States. Show all posts

Monday, June 25, 2012

Move over Hispanics…Here comes the Asian vote

A great deal of emphasis has been placed on the Latino vote in the upcoming presidential election in November, as has been the case in past elections.  In 2008, Barack Obama received 67 percent of the vote compared to Arizona Sen. John McCain who received only 31 percent.  And if you recall, McCain had been in favor of some kind of immigration reform back in the past.  But Hispanics still decided to rally around a Democrat and helped to elect Obama.

Hispanic voter summit
But that is 2008 and this is 2012 when things have changed radically.  We weren’t sure yet but the wheels were already beginning to come off the economy and we took a nose dive economically, Latinos taking a harder hit than others.  Also in this period, the President deported more immigrants than any other President before him.  That didn’t sit well in the Hispanic community, but they were still more concerned over jobs, the economy and education.

Hispanic News reports that “…21.5 million Latino citizen adults will be eligible to vote in November 2012, up from 19.5 million in 2008.”   HN predicts that if the rates of registration continue as they are, that means 8 million more Hispanic voters.  This site also provides a breakdown of the number of eligible Latino voters by state, as well as the numbers of those not registered.  Currently, polls favor Obama over Mitt Romney by a 63% to 27% margin.

Next, enter the Asian population which, according to a recent Pew Research Center study, is the largest group of new arrivals in the U.S.  Asians passed Latinos in 2010 at a rate of 36 percent new immigrants to 31 percent for Hispanics.  Asians represent 4.9 percent of the total U.S. population, Latinos 16.3 percent.  Pew says that in 2008 the vote was broken down, white 76.3%, black 12.1%, Hispanic 7.4% and Asian 2.5%.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political scientist at the U. of California, Riverside, and an expert on Asian-American immigration and civic participation commented that, “…if the trends continue, Asian-Americans will play greater roles in shaping American society and perhaps, more significantly in an election year, they will have an impact at the polls.”  Another key point by Ramakrishnan was the fact that far fewer Asian Americans enter the U.S. illegally than do Latinos.

Other findings by Pew included, “Asian-Americans are more satisfied than any other Americans with their lives, finances and direction of the country.  ‘They also place more value on traditional marriage, family and parenthood and usually possess a strong work ethic.  ‘And 93% of Asian-Americans describe people of their origin as ‘very hard-working,’ whereas only 57% said the same about Americans as a whole.”  They are also the best educated in American history.


3.4 million Asians voted in 2008

Asian-Americans attain college degrees (61%) at about double the rate of recent non-Asian immigrants (30%), and they are willing to make big sacrifices for the education of their children.  Asian median annual household income is $66,000 versus $49,800 for all Americans.  And here is the good part; most Asians tend to vote for Democrats, except for the Vietnamese, who are also now beginning to lean left.  This will be a solid group for the Dems in the future.

There are two swing states that could be significant in terms of Asian population in the November vote.  In Virginia, 5.6% of the population is Asian and in Nevada it is 7.9%.  When you combine that with Hispanic populations in those two states of 7.95 for Virginia and 26.5 for Nevada, you begin to see how the Democrats will be able to chip away at votes from the GOP in small to large increments.  If the Dems lock up the female vote, Republicans will have a real fight on their hands.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

POLITICAL ANALYSIS: The Hispanic vote and the 12 swing states

Politico says “deep voter dissatisfaction with the economy” is a real threat to President Obama and congressional incumbents in twelve swing states, according to a new Gallup poll.  If you aren’t sure what those dozen states are here is a lineup: Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.  Gallup did their survey in October 2011. 



In general, the poll says 60 percent of the residents in those states don’t think they are any better off than they were in 2008, compared to 37 percent who think they are.  Measured with non-swing states, 54 percent of respondents said they weren’t better off, while 44 percent said they were better off.  I decided to take the 12 states and evaluate them in relation to their Hispanic population to see if the President can count on a majority of this vote in 2012.

The swing state with the most electoral votes is Florida counting 29, followed by Pennsylvania with 20, Ohio 18, Michigan 16, No. Carolina 15, Virginia 13, Wisconsin 10, Colorado 9, Nevada and Iowa with 6 each, New Mexico with 5 and New Hampshire with 4.  This represents a total of 151 electoral votes; 270 are needed to win.  Eight of these states have had increases in their Latino population of over 50 percent since 2002.

Of those with electoral votes of 10 or above, Hispanics have representative percentages in their states’ populations as follows: Florida 22.5%; Penn. 5,7%; Ohio 3.1%; Michigan 4.4%; No. Carolina 8.4%; Virginia 7.9%; and Wisconsin 5.7%.  But add to that smaller electoral number states like Colorado 20.7% Latino; Nevada 26.5 %; and New Mexico 46.3%, and the question is just how much impact can the Hispanic vote have?


2008 vote

Obama won an astounding 359 electoral votes in 2008 taking all the 2012 swing states.  He also walked away with 133 votes from non-swing states like Washington, Oregon, California, Minnesota, Illinois and New York.  Adding this to the 151 swing state votes and you have 284 electoral votes, enough to win the election.  The increase in the Latino population alone could be a factor in delivering the swing states in 2012. 

The question, of course, is whether Barack Obama can convince Hispanics in the swing states he’s the one, and if the economy continues to improve and deliver other states plus the additional five above.

There were 6,646,000 Latino voters in 2010, which amounted to 31.2 percent of eligible voters.  84.2 percent of those had some college and 79.4 percent had incomes of over $50,000.  In one study, the Democrats have an advantage with Hispanics with higher educational attainment, as well as those with longer tenure in the country.  I couldn’t find duration figures on legal Latinos in the U.S. but of the unauthorized 10.2 million here, nearly two-thirds have lived here for at least 10 years suggesting many citizens could be here even longer.

Two GOP states, Arizona and Texas, have a combined 49 electoral votes and could be up for grabs in November.  The Arizona Hispanic population is 29.6 percent, Texas 37.6 percent, both significant enough to at least turn the states purple and seriously challenge Republicans.  No one knows what the impact of the Latino vote will be this November, but it does look as if with the surge in population plus increased voter turnout, Democrats could be riding a wave.


2012 Electoral votes
 As you can see from the above, the numbers are there.  And if the GOP continues its rhetoric against the Hispanic community which doesn’t seem to be letting up, the Dems are even more of a sure bet for this vote.  But since the immigration issue is consistently ranked second with Latinos, behind the economy, but ahead of jobs, health care education and taxes, President Obama still has a lot of work to do.

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