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| Pew Research Center survey says support for Obama seems strong by Latino but they are not quite as certain as general public that they will vote in the election |
Washington: Latino registered voters prefer President Barack Obama over Republican
challenger Mitt Romney by 69% to 21% and express growing satisfaction with the
direction of the nation and the state of their personal finances but are
somewhat less certain than non-Hispanics that they will vote in this election,
according to a new nationwide survey of 1,765 Latinos.
The survey was conducted from September 7 to October 4, 2012, by the Pew
Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.
Obama’s current lead over Romney among Hispanics has barely budged
throughout the 2012 campaign and is larger than in the 2008 election, when he
received 67% of the Hispanic vote to 31% for Republican John McCain (Lopez,
2008).
The new survey also finds a sharp rise in the past year in the share of
Latinos who identify the Democratic Party as the one that has more concern for
Latinos. Some 61% say this now, up from 45% in 2011. Just 10% say this about
the Republican Party, down from 12% in 2011.
The Latino electorate is growing in size and importance. Today some 23.7
million Hispanics are eligible to vote, an increase of more than 4 million
since 2008. Hispanics now account for a record 11.0% of the nation’s eligible
electorate, up from 9.5% in 2008 (Lopez,
Motel and Patten, 2012).
With the turnout rate of eligible Latinos voters historically lagging
behind that of other groups, the new survey finds that 77% of Latino registered
voters say they are “absolutely certain” they will vote this year. By
comparison, 89% of all registered voters say the same in a separate Pew
Research Center survey (2012b)
of the general public taken at the same time.
Likewise, 61% of Latino registered voters say they have thought “quite a
lot” about the upcoming presidential election, compared with 70% of registered
voters in the general public.
At the same time, however, fully two-thirds (67%) of Latino adults say
they believe the Latino vote will have a “major impact” on determining who wins
this year’s election.