Contemporary Chicano/Latino Studies political science

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Chapter 6

nov emBer 2008: t he L at ino vo t e in oBa m a’s gener a L eL e c t ion L a ndsL ide With Loren Collingwood, Sylvia Manzano,

and Ali Valenzuela

History will record that on the day Barack Obama was elected to the pres- idency, he received overwhelming support from the Latino electorate.* On election night, the exit polls reported that Latinos had comprised approxi- mately 9% of the voter turnout and that Barack Obama had received two- thirds (67%) of their ballots. Some estimates were even higher.

Did that matter? How Latinos voted is not in dispute, but the two bigger questions

regarding the 2008 election are these. First, why the enthusiasm for Obama? George W. Bush had managed to get somewhere north of 40% of the Latino vote just four years earlier. John McCain was a longtime and noted champion of immigration reform, and as a consequence the

*An earlier version of part of this chapter appeared as “Measuring Latino Political Influence in National Elections” by Matt Barreto, Loren Collingwood, and Sylvia Manzano, Political Research Quarterly 63, no. 4 (2010).

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Barreto, M., & Segura, G. M. (2014). Latino america : How america's most dynamic population is poised to transform the politics of the nation. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com Created from csupomona on 2020-02-25 13:22:37.

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issue of immigration played almost no role in the general election of 2008. On the basis of recent history and the specific policy positions of the two nominees on the key Latino issue, there was no reason to have assumed that Obama would do so well. Second, was the Latino vote influential in the election? Since the Latino margin was smaller than the total vote mar- gin—Obama’s victory in 2008 was broad, deep, and overwhelming in the Electoral College—the simplest calculation was that Latinos had no effect on the outcome.

In this chapter, we address both of these questions and offer a theory for evaluating group influence in presidential elections.

W h y d i d L AT i n o s s u P P o r T o B A m A i n 2008? Did Latinos vote for Barack Obama just because of the pattern of minori- ties supporting the Democratic Party? Was it that Latinos, compared to whites, have lower household income and that such working-class voters are more likely to support the Democratic Party? Or are other factors also at play? We certainly need to examine the divides in the Latino commu- nity that we identified in Chapter 2—naturalized versus native, the differ- ences between national-origin groups—to see whether they had any effect. We need to examine the possibility that characteristics specific to Latinos as a political group played a role. Finally, what can we say about race and the 2008 election specifically with respect to how racial sentiments may or may not have shaped the views of whites and Hispanics toward Obama? This is a topic we began to explore in the last chapter.

We think the story of the 2008 election among Latinos—that is, under- standing which Latinos supported President Obama and why—requires us to focus on five key factors. First, there were two issues that weighed heavily for Latinos—the economy and the Iraq War. Both tilted heavily against the incumbent party and its nominee. Second, Latinos got signifi- cantly more Democratic in the wake of two failed attempts at immigra- tion reform in 2006 and 2007. Despite McCain’s bona fides on the issue, Latinos were more likely to vote Democrat across every category of parti- san identification. Third, some Latino-specific characteristics had a signif- icant effect on vote choice in 2008, including national-origin differences,

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95Latino America

generation, and nativity. Fourth, we show that the growing strength of Latino group identity and pan-ethnic consciousness contributed to the Democratic vote. Finally, we consider again the highly charged claims re- garding Latino citizens’ propensity (or lack thereof) to vote for black can- didates, first articulated by the Clinton campaign’s Latino pollster, Sergio Bendixen.1

T he 2008 i s s u e e n v i r o n me n T f o r L AT i n o s: i r A q A n d T he e c o n o m y

Latinos generally have a very favorable opinion of the military.2 Histor- ically, the military has served as one venue for Latinos to increase their educational and job opportunities and assimilate in this country.3 As the United States went to war with Iraq in 2003, Latino involvement in the conflict was high, and soon it became evident that Latinos were dispro- portionately suffering war deaths.

There were extensive casualties in the first year of the war among Latino soldiers, many of whom were serving in lower-level infantry po- sitions.4 USA Today reported that, while Latinos were just 10.5% of the military at that time, they made up 17% of US combat forces (higher than their share of the population) and over 11% of those who were killed in action.5 The salience of the war was raised among Latino voters because military recruiters focused more on Latino youth, many of whom chose military service as a path to citizenship or to escape poor educational and employment opportunities in the civilian sector.

Even early in the war, Latino attitudes had soured on Iraq, and the Pew Hispanic Center reported that Latinos had a more negative view than other Americans.6 As it became clearer to the American public that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, many in the Latino community began to question why so many Latino soldiers had been put at risk in the conflict. In 2004, Senator John Kerry tapped into the frus- tration with the Iraq War and made this a major campaign issue. Indeed, published research on the 2004, election found that Latinos with fam- ily members in military service were more likely to support Kerry, con- trary to a national trend of support for President George W. Bush among

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military families.7 Further, those Latinos who believed that Latinos were being disproportionately affected by war casualties were the most likely to cast a vote for Kerry in 2004.

Iraq continued as a major issue for Latinos and non-Latinos alike in the 2006 midterm elections. By then, many Americans believed that Pres- ident Bush had misled the public and provided misinformation about the administration’s true motives for the war. The number of American ca- sualties in Iraq had hit 3,000 in 2006, and Latinos continued to be dis- proportionately affected. As they had done in 2004, Latino voters in 2006 identified opposition to the Iraq War as one of the major issues in their vote choice. According to a poll by the Latino Policy Coalition in Septem- ber 2006, 64% of Latino voters said that a candidate’s position on the Iraq War was “very important” in how they would vote, while 56% said that Bush’s handling of Iraq had made them more likely to vote Democratic in the 2006 midterms. In fact, by April 2007 another Latino Policy Coalition Survey found that 46% of Latino registered voters had a close friend or family member serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, and that two-thirds of all Latino voters felt that the Iraq War had been a mistake.

FIGURe 6.1 The Latino Vote in 2004, by Opinion on Latino Military Service

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Because Hillary Clinton had voted to authorize US force in Iraq in 2003, Barack Obama decided early on to make his opposition to the Iraq War a major campaign issue in 2008. He anticipated that this would cre- ate a clear division between him and Clinton and help him with more liberal voters, who were growing increasingly frustrated and upset over the billions of dollars in expenditures on the war and the thousands of US war casualties. Because of his consistent opposition to Iraq and the incon- sistency of John McCain—who sought to criticize President Bush at times while also supporting stronger military involvement—Obama leaned into the Iraq War issue in 2008, and this may have helped position him with Latinos. Even a year out from the election, Pew reported that two-thirds of all Latinos wanted the United States to withdraw its forces.8

In the months prior to the 2008 election, Latino Decisions polled in the four battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and New Mexico. In those four states (all of which would switch from the GOP to the Dem- ocratic side that November), opposition to the Iraq War was palpable. In Florida, 61% of Latino registered voters said that the war was not worth fighting, while in the other three states that number ranged from 74.7% to 78.1%. In terms of policy preference, 76.4% in Florida favored either be- ginning troop reductions or immediately withdrawing. In the other three states, that number was over 80%.

According to a Latino Decisions poll in November 2008, Latino atti- tudes on Iraq were directly related to their vote choice in 2008. For ex- ample, among those who felt that the current policy in Iraq was working and should be continued, 74% said that they cast a ballot for John Mc- Cain. In contrast, those who said that they favored an immediate with- drawal of US forces voted 83% in support of Barack Obama. Of course, the overwhelming preponderance of Latino voters favored withdrawal and so voted for Obama. Not only was the Iraq War a mobilizing issue for Latinos in 2008, but it may have even eclipsed other policy issues like immigration and health care in delivering votes to Obama. For exam- ple, Obama won an estimated 73% among Latinos who agreed that it was very important for Congress and the president to pass immigration reform in 2009, and 77% of Latinos who supported a shift to universal health insurance voted for Obama in 2008—both of those figures being

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below the 83% of the vote Obama won among Latinos who favored an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.9

The salience of the Iraq conflict and the intensity with which its costs were felt and visited upon Latino voters surely had an effect in the 2008 election. Because then-Senator Obama made opposition to the war a cornerstone of his campaign, he was able to draw a particularly stark difference between himself and his opponent. Senator McCain was an outspoken supporter of the war, both at its inception and during the elec- tion, and was generally regarded as a “hawk” on military matters, not en- tirely surprising given his own life history and military career.

The economic catastrophe of the fall of 2008 was a similarly focusing issue, though one hardly unique to Latinos. Nevertheless, as discussed in earlier chapters, Latinos are particularly vulnerable to the fluctuations of economic cycles; like other low-income people, they have a narrow mar- gin for weathering tough times.

Senator McCain was never credible on the economy issue, particularly after pronouncing in Jacksonville, Florida, on the morning of September 15 (repeating a claim from a month earlier) that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection just hours later. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 504 points that day.

The electoral impact can be seen directly in the movement of states from the GOP to the Democratic column in 2008. When Latino Decisions

FIGURe 6.2 The Latino Vote in 2008, by Preferred Policy Position on Iraq

12.6

37.2

73.2 83.4

74.4

56.9

17.1 8.3

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Continue current Iraq policy

Make some changes, but continue Dighting

Slowly begin to withdraw troops

Immediately withdraw all troops

Obama

McCain

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99Latino America

conducted polls just six weeks out from the election in the four key bat- tleground states (Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and Florida, all four of which cast their electoral votes for Bush in 2004), the results in three of those states showed an overwhelming preference for Senator Obama among Latino voters, ranging from 67% to 71%. Only in Florida was the contest within the margin of error at that time. Latino voters in that state gave us an earful on the economy, which was their top priority. More than one-third reported having had trouble paying their mortgage in the past year.10 By December 2008, just a month after the election and just three months since the crisis had begun, Pew found that nearly 10% of Latino homeowners had missed a mortgage payment, and more than one-third (36%) were worried about being foreclosed.11

Even if McCain had been personally credible on economic issues, the incumbent administration is generally blamed for economic struggles, and the Bush administration ineptitude in handling the crisis proved to be an obstacle that McCain could not overcome with Latino voters (or, indeed, with the American public at large). The issue environment, both domestically and internationally, made the 2008 election a steep climb for the McCain campaign. As history shows, it was too much to overcome.

P A r T i s A n e f f e c T s o n T he L AT i n o v o T e i n 2008 Party identification is a powerful predictor of vote choice for all Ameri- cans, and Latinos are no exception. The effects are not necessarily consis- tent, however, across elections and groups. Zoltan Hajnal and Taeku Lee have found that foreign-born Americans frequently have weaker party attachments and are more likely to identify with “none of the above” in terms of political parties.12 Moreover, Latino Decisions has repeatedly found that a clear majority of Latinos—52% in a 2013 poll—have voted Republican at least once in their life, a significant share of the group given recent outcomes at the presidential and congressional levels.

In the data from the 2008 American National Election Study, party identification had a similar impact for whites and Latinos; however, the size of the effects and the degree of certainty surrounding our estimates reveal striking differences. The top graph of page 101, Figure 6.3, illus- trates the predicted probability that a non-Hispanic white citizen voted

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for John McCain. As whites move along a seven-point party identification scale, a very predictable vote outcome emerges, with very few exceptions. The shaded band illustrates the confidence interval—effectively, how much uncertainty there is around each estimate based on the number of respondents at each level of partisanship who did not end up near the predicted probability. As is apparent, the estimates are very good. Party is a strong and accurate predictor of votes among white voters, controlling for other factors.

We should note, however, that the graph does not start at the origin. That is, for the strongest Democrats the probability of voting for McCain is just under 0.2. That means that, in these data, the model predicts that just under 20% of white strong Democrats will vote for McCain. Our model predicts significant defection among white Democrats. At the op- posite end, nearly all white strong Republicans are predicted to vote for McCain.

Now examine Figure 6.4, the predicted probability that Latinos will vote for McCain. There are two important differences here compared to the graph for non-Hispanic whites. Although there is an upward slope, the distribution is shifted. Among strong Democrats, our model predicts virtually no McCain votes. That is, strong Latino Democrats are more reliably likely to vote for Obama than strong white Democrats, all other things being equal. At the opposite end, the McCain vote still trails parti- san identification. Even among self-identified strong Latino Republicans, only about 80% are expected to vote for McCain, leaving a residual 20% support for Obama. Strong Latino Republicans, then, were significantly less reliable in supporting their party’s nominee in 2008, John McCain.

The uncertainty in the Latino graph is increasingly large and unstable as we move from strong Democrats to strong Republicans. In practice, the model predicts a wider and wider distribution of the likelihood of vot- ing for McCain at each level—so much so that a Latino weak Republican (point 6) has between a 36% and 100% chance of voting Republican. For whites at the same point (weak Republican), the probability of voting Re- publican is between 83% and 91%.

The takeaway is twofold. First, white Republicans and Latino Demo- crats were more reliable voters in 2008 than their opposite counterparts.

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The Latino distribution was shifted toward Obama at every level of par- tisanship. The issues of the economy and Iraq combined with two years of bruising immigration battles that led to no legislation to move Lati- nos across the political spectrum away from Senator McCain and toward Senator Obama. And second, for Latino Republicans, partisanship was a weak effect and a terribly inefficient predictor of vote. Lots of Latino

FIGUReS 6.3 AND 6.4 The Relationship between Party Identification and Vote Choice, 2008

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Republicans voted for McCain, of course—indeed, most of them did—but many of them did not.

s P e c i f i c L AT i n o c h A r A c T e r i s T i c s A n d T he i r e f f e c T s National-Origin Differences To begin our discussion of the effects of specific Latino characteristics on the 2008 election, we consider country of ancestry. Cubans demonstrated the highest Republican vote share in pre- vious research, but other national-origin groups showed some variation in 2008.13 Latinos of Mexican and Puerto Rican origin were statistically more likely to vote for Obama, while Latinos of South American origin were less likely to vote for Obama; a majority of South American Latinos still did vote for Obama, but their rates were noticeably lower than those of voters of Mexican or Puerto Rican ancestry.

Cuban Americans, on the other hand, demonstrated majority sup- port for McCain. Cuban Americans have historically differed from other Latino groups on ideological and policy matters, largely as a consequence of Fidel Castro’s takeover of the island and the influx of large numbers of Cubans seeking political asylum in the United States. These refugees came with significant resources—which was one reason why they chose to flee the island—and received substantial assistance from the United States. GOP anticommunism and a residual resentment of the Kennedy admin- istration combined with this history to help form the Cuban American identity as a Republican group. Cubans also face no immigration hurdle once they reach the US mainland.

Cuban interest groups, such as the Cuban American National Foun- dation, have worked hard to preserve this identity. But younger Cuban Americans are increasingly thinking and acting more like other Latino populations, and the eventual deaths of Fidel and Raul Castro may further erode the GOP identification of this group.

Generation and Nativity A second key factor in ethnic-specific liter- ature is generation status—most importantly, whether the subject is foreign-born or a US-born citizen. Immigration and naturalization, par- ticularly for Mexicans but also for Dominicans and other Central and South Americans, is an exhausting and educative process that requires

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significant contact with the federal bureaucracy. Those seeking US citi- zenship through naturalization must merge their political socialization in the home country with their new experiences in the United States, and the difficult life circumstances faced by migrants on both sides of the border often come into play. Thus, we expected that generation—and in particu- lar, status as a foreign-born citizen—would significantly affect the likeli- hood that Latinos would vote for Obama.

In the end, first-generation immigrants were the most likely to vote for Obama in 2008; there was a small but statistically significant increase in the probability of voting for McCain among second-, third-, and fourth-generation US-born Latinos. Again, we find that, across genera- tions, a majority of Latinos voted for Obama, but there was a stair-step pattern to their voting: with each successive generation, McCain increased his vote share. The relatively older Cuban population may have had some impact on this outcome.

L AT i n o g r o u P i d e n T i T y, s oL i d A r i T y, A n d v o T e c h o i c e The literature on African Americans has posited an important effect of group consciousness or identity on both the formation of political pref- erences and the likelihood of acting on them.14 Michael Dawson’s con- cept of “linked fate” is the perception on the part of African Americans that their individual experiences are likely to be closely tied to those of others in their group. For instance, an individual who perceives that all African Americans are doing better and believes that she will thus do better too is exhibiting a sense of linked fate. Dawson goes on to iden- tify the “black utility heuristic,” meaning essentially that, because of their sense of linked fate, many African American voters make judgments about candidates and policies based on what they believe is good for the group overall.

Do Latinos have such a sense of group solidarity? And if they do, is it associated with their voting choices? An expanded ANES in 2008 afforded us a chance to directly test this possibility among Latinos. Pan-ethnic sol- idarity, as a political resource, is a more problematic notion for Latinos than it is for African Americans precisely because of the national-origin and generational variations we discussed earlier. It is not immediately

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clear that Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Dominicans, and Cubans should necessarily perceive one another as common members of a single group.15 Latinos have some characteristics that tend toward commonal- ity, including the Spanish language and their Roman Catholic tradition, history of Spanish colonialism, and increasingly overlapping media and entertainment worlds. On the other hand, their unique national origins, their unique racial histories, and their different experiences in the United States might undermine any sense that the group of all Latinos is (or should be) a unified political actor.16

The scholars who conducted the Latino National Political Survey (LNPS) in 1989 saw only limited evidence of pan-ethnic consciousness, a result suggesting that pan-ethnic identification was very unlikely to be much of a political resource. More recent work, however, has documented a substantial increase in pan-ethnic identification.17 Moreover, there is growing evidence that expressions of pan-ethnic political commonality and linked fate are associated with increases in a variety of “desirable” political activities, including knowledge, sophistication, and propensity to register, to vote, and to engage in civic association.18 Curiously, pan- ethnic identification is also associated with more positive assessments of associations between Latino interests and the interests of African Amer- icans. By extension, then, we expected that stronger Latino pan-ethnic solidarity would be associated with votes for Obama.

And that in fact turned out to be the case. Based on our model esti- mates, moving from the lowest to the highest levels of self-reported group identity decreased the probability of a Latino citizen’s vote for McCain and increased the likelihood—by over 13%—that that citizen’s vote would go to Obama. Those Latinos who more strongly expressed a sense of commonality and linked fate with other Latinos were significantly more supportive of Barack Obama’s candidacy. Solidarity among Latinos has a political effect.

r A c i A L AT T i T u d e s A n d T he 2008 L AT i n o v o T e Finally, we examine once again the highly charged claims that Latino cit- izens are ambivalent about voting for black candidates, as articulated by the Clinton campaign’s Latino pollster Sergio Bendixen. John McCain

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105Latino America

was unique among 2008 Republican candidates: his extensive contact with Latino community leaders and the perception of him as a Latino ad- vocate on immigration made a GOP vote in his case (let alone a simple abstention) easier to swallow. If racial sentiment was strong, negative, and politically relevant for Latinos, that should have been borne out in the 2008 data.

Even if the trope of black-brown conflict does not seem to hold water, Latinos are not free of prejudice or discriminatory views toward African Americans. The racial histories of Latin American societies are varied and complex, and there is a literature suggesting that Latino views of African Americans are reminiscent of white views.19 So the claim that racial atti- tudes might dampen Latino support for Obama was not actually that far removed from similar claims about white voters.

Comparisons between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites on three different measures of racial sentiment are reported in Table 6.1. The first is a simply battery of stereotypes capturing old-fashioned, negative beliefs about African Americans. We use the comparison of the evaluations of blacks and whites on the lazy-to-hardworking scale and on the intelligent- to-unintelligent scale.20 The second measure is a four-item index we call “racial resentment”: designed to measure antiblack attitudes, this index uses ambiguously worded items that racially motivated respondents can respond to truthfully without fear of identifying themselves as prejudiced. Two of the items are sympathetic to African Americans, and two of the items are critical.21 The third measure is the affect misattribution proce- dure (AMP), which estimates the unconscious presence of racial senti- ment in a respondent’s judgments.22

Latinos’ mean responses on stereotype measures, the AMP, and the negatively valenced items in the racial resentment index are statistically indistinguishable from those expressed by non-Hispanic whites—that is, there is no meaningful difference in how the two groups score on average. The only distinctions are on the positively valenced items in the racial resentment index: Latinos are less likely than whites to reject these sym- pathetic statements, and this difference alone drives the difference we find in the overall index. Overall, it is fair to say that while Latino views may be slightly more generous toward their black fellow citizens, Latino beliefs about African Americans look a lot like white beliefs.

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The big question, however, was this: would Latinos vote based on racial attitudes in the same way that white voters did? Latinos may in fact hold stereotypic views of African Americans similar to those held by whites, but we expected that the effect of these views on their voting would be smaller or absent altogether. Research on Latino voter preferences has repeatedly shown an electorate that is more sophisticated than widely believed and that Latinos vote consistently with their issue preferences (on school vouchers, abortion, gun control, and other matters), are less swayed by symbolism than previously believed, and are not significantly affected by “social” appeals like anti-abortion and anti-gay policy posi- tions.23 However, did Latinos’ racial sentiments cloud their judgment in 2008?

The results of our analysis clearly demonstrate that no black-brown divide existed in 2008. In other words, racial resentment, or animus, while not altogether absent among Latinos, did not play a meaningful role in shaping their preferences in the 2008 election. Among whites, antiblack attitudes were a significant predictor of voting against Obama,

TABLe 6.1 Comparing Measures of Antiblack Affect or Racial Senti- ments between White and Latino Respondents, 2008

Latino White Significance N Unweighted F-test (white + Hispanic)

Racial resentment 9.27 10.31 9.77 1,439 (range: 0 to 16) (3.38) (3.74) p = 0.0018

Positively valenced RR 3.91 4.87 23.26 1,451 (range: 0 to 8) (2.17) (2.21) p = 0.0000

Negatively valenced RR 5.35 5.44 0.23 1,443 (range: 0 to 8) (2.12) (2.08) p = 0.6313

Stereotype 0.82 0.79 0.13 1,464 (range: -2 to +2) (1.09) (0.97) p = 0.7205

AMP difference 0.16 0.17 0.20 1,325 (-1 to +1) (0.31) (0.31) p = 0.7487

Source: American National Election Study, 2008. Note: RR = racial resentment; AMP = affect misattribution procedure.

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so antiblack attitudes in this group signaled a decrease in the probability that they would vote for Obama that was quite robust. Just 25% of whites holding the most negative views on the racial resentment scale voted for Obama, compared with 90% among the least resentful. Yet for Latinos this variable appears to have carried no particular political salience—that is, it was not statistically significant in their vote choices with a black candidate running for president. This relationship is best depicted in the graph of predicted probabilities found in Figure 6.5. Although the slope is positive, it is not statistically significant, and in fact the confidence bounds widen noticeably around those with conservative racial beliefs.

We also addressed the topic of group relations and racial attitudes be- tween Latinos and blacks by including a variable about antiblack attitudes to see whether this contributed to voting against Obama among Latinos, and also among whites. Unsurprisingly, Latinos who agreed that African Americans and Latinos have political and economic issues in common were significantly more likely to vote for Obama. Coupled with our earlier

FIGURe 6.5 Marginal effects of Racial Resentment on Probability of Voting For Barack Obama in 2008, Latinos and Non-Hispanic Whites

Source: Based on statistical estimations by Gary Segura and Ali Valenzuela.

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finding that Latinos with a high sense of shared linked fate were also more likely to support Obama, the data give us strong reason to reject the idea that Latinos and African Americans are at odds with each other over po- litical representation, or that Latino racial attitudes are so extreme as to prevent a coalition.

There can be little doubt that racial sentiments continue to play a role in American elections, and 2008 was no exception. Despite the election of an African American president, the evidence remains strong that ra- cial sentiments remain an important covariate of party attachment and, beyond, predicted support or opposition to the Obama candidacy and even strength of views on him. Obama’s share of the white vote was con- siderably less than half, diminished vis-à-vis Kerry’s in several states, and extremely small in a number of deep-south states.

Curiously, and in contrast to claims by pundits and scholars alike, the evidence suggests that racial thinking played a significantly weaker role in the voting decisions of Latinos in 2008 than in the voting decisions of whites. When weighed against other factors, racial sentiments do not appear to have entered into Latinos’ evaluation of the Obama candidacy.

s o L AT i n o s s u P P o r T e d o B A m A —T o W h AT e f f e c T? Despite constituting the largest minority group in the United States, Latinos typically receive only superficial attention from candidates and the media when it comes to presidential politics. The peculiarities of the Electoral College, a state-level winner-take-all system, has led Latino politics research to focus on explaining Latinos’ negligible influence on the outcomes of presidential elections. The political climate changed in 2008 when mainstream media outlets and campaigns, not just advocacy groups, began repeatedly to describe Latinos as the single most important voting bloc in presidential elections. For example, Arturo Vargas, head of the prominent National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Of- ficials (NALEO), bluntly proclaimed in a 2007 op-ed, “Latino voters will decide the 2008 election. The Latino vote is positioned as the power punch that may deliver the knockout blow in 2008.”

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The noted Latino politics expert Rodolfo de la Garza of Columbia University vehemently countered this narrative and related media hype, however, by arguing that “the Latino vote is completely irrelevant. The myth was created by Latino leaders who wanted to convince politicians nationally about how important Latinos were.”24 Latino voters were heav- ily concentrated in uncompetitive states such as California, Texas, and New York, de la Garza pointed out, and too small in number to matter in contested states.25 These diametrically opposed interpretations from rec- ognized experts would leave observers and scholars puzzled in 2008.

The truth is that it is difficult in presidential elections, if not impossible, for any single group of voters to claim a unique influence in determining the outcome. Despite this difficulty, interest groups, advocates, the media, and scholars spend considerable time debating afterwards whether one group or another tipped the scales. In 2000 it was argued at length that votes for the independent candidate Ralph Nader “cost” Vice President Al Gore the election and that “soccer moms” ensured a Bush victory.26 In 2004 it was repeatedly said that his gains among Latinos influenced Bush’s reelection and that evangelical “values” voters turned out in great numbers to ban marriage for same-sex couples and secure Bush’s second term.27 During the 2008 presidential contest, it was the turn of the Latino vote, which received more hype than ever. Latinos’ strong preference for Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary fed speculation that Lati- nos could make or break the election. The Associated Press reported— and others agreed—that low Latino support for Obama could doom him in key states, whereas large gains in the Latino vote could lead to a Dem- ocratic victory in Republican-leaning states such as Florida, Nevada, and Colorado.

On the one hand, it is true that the Latino electorate cannot meet the empirical threshold necessary to back up claims that they single-handedly determined Obama’s victory. The fact that Obama defeated John McCain by 365 to 173 in the Electoral College doesn’t suggest that it was a close contest. And in any event, the “did the [fill in the blank] group cast the deciding vote?” question is shortsighted—very few segments of the elec- torate could meet such a daunting standard of influence. Moreover, there

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is more than one way to measure group influence in an election. Post- election tallies are informative, but they can be too narrow an interpreta- tion of “influence.” All this being the case, and despite Obama’s significant margin of victory, we argue that Latino voters were still quite influential throughout the campaign, from the drawn-out primary to Tuesday, No- vember 4, 2008.

We use the 2008 election here as a basis for a new framework to evalu- ate Latino influence beyond vote tallies. We have identified three dimen- sions to use in measuring Latino influence in electoral politics:

1. Demographics: Measured as coethnic group size and growth rate in the state

2. Electoral volatility: Specifically, changes in registration rates, partisan preference, or turnout compared to prior contests

3. Mobilization: Measured as the media coverage and resources devoted to courting Latino votes

Using these three broad categories, we assess a wide array of publicly available data to create an overall index of Latino influence in each of the fifty states. This approach moves beyond the zero-sum definitions of po- litical clout that neglect these consequential realms of influence.

A newly mobilized or fast-growing electorate can alter the issue agen- das of campaigns and debates, cause campaigns to divert resources from other groups, make formerly safe states competitive and competitive states safe, reshape the platforms on which nominees run, and even alter the electoral behavior of other groups in society.

In the 2008 presidential contest, fourteen states were clearly identified as swing states that would determine the election outcome, leaving thirty- six states, because of their lopsided partisan leanings, in the “unimport- ant” category. On election day 2008, 120 million votes were cast, and of those, 40 million came from the fourteen battleground states—accounting for 33% of all votes. So it should come as no surprise that a majority of all voters—white, black, Latino, Asian—reside in noncompetitive states.

Our analysis shows that Latinos were very influential in seven swing states: Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina,

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and Indiana. Further, we find evidence of extensive Latino mobilization, though it led to a lesser overall impact, in Arizona, Ohio, California, Texas, Missouri, and Minnesota, foreshadowing a greater degree of influ- ence in these six states in 2012 and beyond.

Just four years earlier, Republican president George W. Bush had won close to 40% of the Latino vote overall, as well as winning the Latino-heavy states of New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida. For Obama to win in 2008, some or all of those states had to swing, and the Latino vote was vital.

c A n “g r o u P s” r e A L Ly i n f L u e n c e P r e s i d e n T i A L e L e c T i o n s? Ordinarily, the unique structure of presidential elections, from primaries to the general election, diminishes mass influence on electoral outcomes. Most voters reside in noncompetitive general election states, and the fact that very few minorities reside in early primary states limits their ability to influence the early stages of presidential politics. But 2008 was differ- ent: Latino influence was palpable well before the first contest of the pri- mary season took place. In 2004 and 2008, George W. Bush received a well-publicized, slightly higher-than-average share of the Latino vote.28 The actual change in the Latino preference for Republicans was quite small substantively: Bush’s receipt of about 7% more of the vote than usual from 8% of the electorate made a difference of just 0.56% in Novem- ber 2004. But in an era of close presidential elections, half a percent was enough to motivate the Democratic Party to alter the primary calendar to include a Latino-influence state early in the season. Nevada was the third state to host a Democratic nominating contest. Including this Western state with a growing Latino electorate early in the process was a strategic decision. The party wanted to shore up Latino support, which they feared was softening, and enable Latinos to have more influence in determining the party nominee. These changes to the primary election calendar were the catalyst for a larger Latino influence in the general election as many competitive Democratic contests continued to highlight the Latino vote as a key demographic.29 When the general election campaign season arrived, the record turnout in the primaries, in addition to their experience with

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Latino electorates in their home states, made both the Obama and Mc- Cain camps keenly aware of the Latino vote.

It is a truism that turnout peaks when elections are decided by a small margin.30 It stands to reason, then, that the political environment should be evaluated prior to election day so as to identify the factors that will contribute to creating the perception of a competitive race. States can be characterized as competitive when certain conditions apply, foremost among them being: pre-election polls indicating a very close race; media reports framing the closeness of the contest as important to the outcome; and candidates spending millions on advertisements and voter outreach in the state. When these conditions hold in a state, its voters are influen- tial because the political environment is competitive. Such conditions are set well before a single ballot is cast.

Once the votes are tallied, however, even seemingly competitive con- tests may yield lopsided margins, for a variety of reasons. One party may have made a stronger outreach effort, for example, or conducted a superior get-out-the-vote drive. So even if the election result appears noncompet- itive, the state may continue to be important during the actual campaign because of the significant resources and attention invested there.

That is why simple post-election tallies miss the real impact that a group has on election outcomes during the weeks and months of the campaign. Nevada exemplified this impact in 2008. Exactly two weeks be- fore the election, the Politico/Insider Advantage poll put Nevada at 47% Obama, 47% McCain, and 6% undecided. The campaigns spent $13 mil- lion on television advertising alone in the state, which was inundated with television and radio ads, candidate appearances and events, and voter out- reach efforts.31 Ultimately, Obama won Nevada by twelve points, with an estimated 76% vote from Latinos, up from 60% for Kerry in 2004. This is Latino influence, whichever way we want to count it.

Voter traits and trends, of course, are standard measures of influence, but there is more to deciding whether a given group is influencing the political landscape. Voters, the media, and campaigns tell each other how close a race has become. Campaigns rely heavily on polling and are espe- cially attuned to short-term, recent trends in turnout, partisanship, mar- gins of victory, voter registration, and demographic composition. Using

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this information, they decide where to spend money and how best to get the vote out. National and regional media communicate to both voters and campaigns the closeness of the race and the importance of particular issues and groups of voters. When voters see these reports on how close the election is, the increasing attention and excitement has been shown to affect turnout.32

In this vein, news stories that highlight the importance of the Latino vote convey to campaign staffs and the broader electorate the impor- tance of Latinos in creating statewide competitiveness and winning co- alitions. Online media provided another unique contribution to assessing and publicizing campaign competitiveness in 2008. Three sites—Five ThirtyEight.com, Pollster.com, and RealClearPolitics.com—developed a na- tional following for their regularly updated (at weekly and daily intervals), empirically derived predictions of state-by-state election outcomes, and FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver even became a star eventually. National, state, and local news outlets regularly sourced the “RCP average” and the “538 prediction,” based on the survey and poll results that were posted and analyzed by both websites, as authoritative measures of national and state- level campaign competitiveness in the weeks leading up to election day.

Of course, voters are also influenced by direct mobilization: television, print and radio advertising, mailers, phone calls, and online mobilization efforts signal to voters that their state is in play.33 Latino voters are no ex- ception, though as we pointed out in Chapter 4, they are less likely than other groups to be the target of outreach, particularly from parties and candidates. A spate of recent research points to the effectiveness of tar- geted campaign appeals to Latinos.34

The Obama campaign brought peer-level innovation to online mo- bilization and incorporated this technology into unique Latino outreach strategies already in place.35 As anyone who ever contacted the 2008 Obama campaign knows, it revolutionized the use of electronic commu- nication and social media for political purposes. The campaign website facilitated extensive contact in two directions: (1) directly from the cam- paign to voters, and (2) voter to voter. Those who provided contact in- formation to the campaign regularly received text messages and emails encouraging their participation (as voters, contributors, or volunteers)

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in the primary and general elections, which were consistently described as “tight races” and “tough battles.” Individuals were also encouraged to self-identify with multiple online peer groups (for example, “Latinos for Obama,” “Ohioans for Obama,” or “Obama-mamas”), each of which had its own Web-based organizational arm. Every one of these organizations conducted outreach activities aimed exclusively at its particular affinity group in key states.

As we discussed earlier, it is often easier to get Latinos mobilized by re- sorting to friends and family rather than spokespeople, famous or other- wise. For average Latino voters—many of whom are never contacted at all by candidates or parties—making it easier for them to interact repeatedly with influential familiars and to be contacted by them was an important and potentially pivotal strategy shift.

s í s e P u e d e? me A s u r e s o f L AT i n o i n f L u e n c e i n 2008 In the aftermath of Obama’s victory, many efforts were made to assess the relevance of the Latino vote. Using nothing more than post-election tallies to evaluate whether the Latino vote caused a state to be won or lost, analysts found the Latino influence to be weak. In addition, Obama had won many states by a wider margin than expected, and that made it diffi- cult to find the math proving that Latinos cast the deciding ballots. In our own assessment, we find strong and consistent evidence across our three key areas—group size, electoral patterns, and mobilization—that Latinos in key states did influence the 2008 election. Further, our data may fore- shadow which states will merit the attention of pundits down the road as the Latino influence grows in new regions and new states (two strong candidates being Montana and Georgia).

The traditional post-hoc election result tally is one of the measures of influence cited by de la Garza and DeSipio in their quadrennial analysis of the Latino vote in presidential elections, though they (correctly) dismiss it as too unrealistic.36 Latinos may have influenced the 2008 election if the margin they provided for the winner was larger than the overall margin of victory. In other words, if no Latino had voted, would Obama have won?

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Looking at Table 6.2, we find three instances in which the overall state victory margin for Obama was smaller than the vote margin provided to him by Latinos alone. By this crude measure, it is possible to argue that Latinos directly influenced the election results in North Carolina, Indiana, and New Mexico.

However, this measure dismisses the influence that Latinos probably had in other states, such as Nevada, Florida, and Colorado, where the overall victory margin was too great for Latinos alone to have provided it. This type of analysis is problematic for several reasons. First, it offers no leverage in predictive research questions about the conditions prior to election day and about the states that will matter because it is based solely on tallies of election results. Second, it ignores the states where there may have been Latino influence during the campaign through outreach, adver- tising, or mobilization but the election results do not back this up. Third, this analysis may artificially categorize a state as an “influence” state just because the overall margin was razor-thin there. As we have noted, it is more than possible for a state to be perceived as a close contest but to be deemed noncompetitive after the votes are counted.

group size and growth

A prerequisite for a group to have influence is that it meets a minimum group size and, preferably, it should be cohesive or mobilized. If the pres- idential election in Maine or North Dakota is very close, it is impossible for Latinos to influence the outcome because their group size is too small in those states and it’s not growing rapidly. Thus, a simple starting point for any analysis of a minority group’s influence is to assess the share of all registered voters that it represents. Data from the 2006 Current Pop- ulation Survey, which provide the best estimate for Latino percentages among registered voters for all fifty states, show a range from a low of 0.1% in Maine to a high of 30.4% in New Mexico. In particular, it would be very difficult to ever witness Latino influence in a statewide election in a state that is less than 2% Latino among registered voters. According to the CPS data, twenty-five states were 2% or less Latino among citizens registered to vote in 2006. The patterns depicted in Figure 6.6 are pre- dictable and consistent with Latino population figures that are now well

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117Latino America

known. States in the Southwest and the Mountain West have significant Latino registered-voter populations, as do Florida and some states in the Northeast.

In addition to group size, the growth rate among registered voters is particularly important as a gauge of influence. Figure 6.7 reports the change in the Latino-to-white voter registration share over an eight-year period, 1998 to 2006. This estimate gives us a sense of the absolute gains in Latino voter presence vis-à-vis the largest group in the state (whites). The states depicted in lighter shading reported little to no change in the Latino-to-white comparison. That is, if Latinos were 10% of all registered voters in 1998, they still made up about 10% of registered voters in 2006. In contrast, the states depicted in darker shades experienced accelerated Latino registration growth. For example, in 1998 the Nevada electorate was 86% white and 5% Latino; by 2006 that had changed to 75% white and 10% Latino, resulting in an eleven-point difference for whites and a positive five-point change for Latinos and yielding a net increase for Latinos of +16. Other states, such as Wyoming, Missouri, Ohio, Mary- land, and Massachusetts also witnessed a net increase in registered Latino voters of over 7%. These sizable shifts in ethnic composition within the electorate are remarkable because they occurred in less than a decade.

FIGURe 6.6 Percentage Latino among Registered Voters, 2006

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Of course, we would expect Latinos to exert some influence where they are a sizable share of the population. They may also have influence in states where they are relatively small in number but are becoming a rapidly increasing share of the electorate, signaling the demography of the future voting public. Growth measures alone may miss the influence of Latino voters in places where there is a large and relatively stable share of Latinos in the electorate. New Mexico is a case in point: the growth in the Latino percentage of the population between 1998 and 2006 is unremark- able, but nonetheless nearly one voter in three in New Mexico is Latino, and the state has a long history of electing Latinos to office, including the US Senate and the governor’s office. Indeed, the last two governors of New Mexico have been Latino—former Democratic governor Bill Rich- ardson and the current governor, Susana Martinez, a Republican. So it is the combination of population size and growth rate that more realistically captures a group’s opportunity for influence in a state election.

electoral Patterns and volatility

For a group to demonstrate electoral influence, election-specific factors are of obvious importance. Here we focus on two: the degree of voting

FIGURe 6.7 The Growth in Latino Registration Relative to White Regis- tration, 1998–2006

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119Latino America

cohesiveness among Latinos, and the degree of expected competitiveness of the state election.

Voting cohesiveness is measured as the average Democratic vote among Latinos from 2000 to 2006 minus the average Democratic vote among non-Latinos. For Latinos to have influenced a state’s election, they ought to have demonstrated somewhat different voting patterns than non-Latinos in the state. Using the National Election Pool (NEP) state polls for the 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 elections, we created a measure for average Democratic vote for Latinos and non-Latinos by state. Fig- ure 6.8 shows the Latino Democratic vote differential for all states. States shaded dark are those where Latinos vote much more consistently Dem- ocratic than do non-Latinos in the state, while states shaded lighter are those where Latinos and non-Latinos demonstrate very similar parti- san vote preferences. Latinos tend to vote more Democratic than non- Latinos do throughout the United States, and this is most pronounced in the Southwest and Mountain West, where four states—Texas, Ari- zona, Colorado, and Utah—have a Latino population that is about twenty points more Democratic. There is a notable pattern of Democratic vote cohesion among Latinos throughout the entire West.

FIGURe 6.8 The Latino Democratic Vote Relative to the Non-Latino Democratic Vote, 2000–2006

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The second important piece of electoral information is the expected competitiveness in the state election. This is one of the most important indicators of group influence. Without a doubt, it is much more diffi- cult—though not impossible—to influence an election in a state that is completely uncompetitive. Although it is worth pointing out that some states, like California, are uncompetitive largely because Latinos are influential.

However, the traditional measure of looking to post-election results is not a complete guide to competitiveness. A group has influence, not after the election, but during the active campaign, most likely in the last thirty days. We took the average poll rating one month before the election from Real Clear Politics’ state poll average in 2008.

The map in Figure 6.9 is familiar to most readers: it shows the antic- ipated closeness of the 2008 presidential election in each state. The most darkly shaded states were those with very close pre-election poll averages, while the very lightly shaded states were not expected to be close at all. Coupled with the data reported in Figure 6.8, it is possible to sort out the states with more or less Latino influence. For example, a state like Ohio was expected to be very competitive, and it had a Latino electorate that voted considerably more Democratic.

FIGURe 6.9 Average Competitiveness Level by State, October 2008: real clear Politics

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As we add in additional factors, such as those collected in Figures 6.6 and 6.7, the overall influence story begins to take shape. We turn next to the last piece of this puzzle: the components of mobilization.

mo B i L i z AT i o n A n d r e s o u r c e s The final set of criteria that we believe to be important is how a campaign engages—or fails to engage—the Latino community. The campaign itself must have taken note of Latinos as a potential influence group. That is, as the candidate campaigns and the media covers the campaign, both must have paid attention to the Latino vote as a crucial bloc. We assess this by measuring three factors: the change in media coverage of the Latino vote; the campaign ad buys targeting Latinos; and the campaign’s ethnic mobi- lization. Using Lexis-Nexis content data on the Latino vote and the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, we amassed data on both the rate of news stories on the Latino vote and the change in this rate from 2004. These data are normalized and combined in Figure 6.10. The darker states are those where media coverage of Latino voters increased; as the map shows, almost every state saw a steady increase in the coverage of the Latino vote during the presidential campaign.

FIGURe 6.10 Changes in the Media Coverage of the Latino Vote, 2004–2008

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Spanish-language television ads are an easily collectable proxy for out- reach to the Latino community. TV ads are important because they are costly; the decision to spend finite resources on the Latino community would have emerged from an important campaign calculus. However, Spanish-language ads are not the only way in which campaigns targeted Latino voters. Unfortunately, data on the content of English-language ads, collected by the Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG) project, are not available until two years after the election. In contrast, Spanish ad data are available in real time from the public disclosures on campaign spending. We do not include a figure on Spanish TV ad expenditures be- cause only four states ran both Obama and McCain campaign ads: Flor- ida, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico. The fact that none of the other states had such ads puts significant weight on these four states.

In addition to TV ad spending, we gathered data on Latino group mo- bilization by the presidential campaigns. Although data were available only from the Obama campaign, they were very rich. Again, for each state we collected the number of members of Latinos for Obama groups, and also the amount of money raised by these groups, both normalized over the state’s total Latino registered voter population. In Figure 6.11, we map the Obama campaign’s Latino mobilization. Before we can ac- cept or dismiss the claim that Latinos had influence in a particular state, we should assess the degree to which they were mobilized. For example, Figure 6.11 shows that Latino mobilization by the Obama campaign in 2008 was fairly strong in Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, and Nevada. It also shows that Latinos in Missouri and Arizona were less likely to be mobilized by the Obama campaign; Obama narrowly lost these two states, but might have won them had his campaign engaged in stronger Latino mobilization. Latino activity was brisk in noncompetitive states like Illinois, New York, and Texas. The online participation and mone- tary contributions of Latinos in these states especially matter to the po- litical elites and fund-raisers, irrespective of the electoral competitiveness of their state.

We can depict Latino influence by combining all of these data points into a single model. Drawing on these three categories, we include group size and growth, electoral volatility, and mobilization to explain Latino

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influence in the 2008 election. The final Latino influence map (Figure 6.12) combines all prior metrics. The darker states had higher Latino influence composite scores, while states that are white had practically no Latino in- fluence. Theoretically, a state with the absolute strongest Latino political influence meets the following conditions: it has a large Latino popula- tion, rapid growth in Latino voter registration, record increased rates of partisan cohesiveness compared to non-Latinos, a competitive electoral environment, media focus on the Latino vote, and extensive campaign outreach to and mobilization of Latinos. Anecdotally, the darkest states on the map seemed to have had the greatest Latino influence: Florida, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico. Texas and Arizona also score high because on a number of metrics they demonstrated considerable Latino influence; however, they did lack a key element in 2008, namely, compet- itiveness and/or campaign outreach. The states shaded gray matched our expectations: Virginia, Indiana, and Ohio all demonstrated high Latino influence in 2008. Missouri, Minnesota, California, and Washington were also Latino-influence states, but they did not score consistently high across all dimensions.

FIGURe 6.11 The Rate of Membership in Latinos for Obama Groups and the Money Raised, 2008

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f i n A L A n A Ly s i s: T he i n f L u e n c e o f L AT i n o s o n T he 2008 e L e c T i o n

Our findings indicate that both the Vargas and de la Garza claims about Latino voter influence in 2008, mentioned at the outset of this chapter, are overstated. The Latino vote did not deliver the power punch in what became a landslide victory for Obama, but Latinos were far from irrele- vant. Latino influence was greatest in Nevada and Florida, two of the most hyped battleground states; both flipped from Republican to Democrat from 2004 to 2008.

No matter what metric we use, our analyses demonstrate that Lati- nos, like any other group, have an influence that is not absolute but rather tempered by a combination of factors. Latinos alone cannot be credited for the Obama victory—or for the two prior Bush wins for that matter. At the same time, discounting the entire Latino electorate as categorically irrelevant to the outcome in 2008 is a misguided generality that overlooks a measureable influence that was critical to constructing a winning coali- tion in specific states.

FIGURe 6.12 The Combined Index of Latino Influence in the 2008 election

Source: Map created by the authors based on Index of Latino Influence.

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125Latino America

Thinking about political influence in broad terms allows us to under- stand more about racial and ethnic dynamics at the mass and elite levels, and it highlights the relevant trends that address substantive questions regarding the role of Latinos in presidential politics. Importantly, the ap- proach we outline and demonstrate here can be applied in different types of elections and to other segments of the electorate. This framework at- tends to factors that are theoretically relevant to an increasingly diverse electorate and will be useful over the long term as the racial and ethnic politics research develops.

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As we look back on the 2008 election, we now have a clearer vision of whether and where Latinos had an effect. The Iraq War and the economic meltdown of 2008 dominated the issue agenda, and Latinos had little in- terest in what John McCain had to sell on those two issues, despite his long-standing support for immigration reform. Though the two-party vote among Latinos varied by a number of key factors, including national origin and generation, it is clear that most Latinos—and nearly all Latinos with a strong attachment to Latino pan-ethnic identity—voted for Barack Obama. Indeed, the attraction to Obama was so powerful that Latino Democrats demonstrated lockstep unity while many Latino Republicans strayed away from the fold to vote for the Illinois senator.

Dozens of academic research studies have been published on the sole topic of racial attitudes and voting in 2008. Some political science journals have devoted entire symposia issues to this issue, and their papers have empirically proven that racial attitudes had a noticeable effect in 2008. Efforts to isolate a racial effect among Latinos, however, have yielded little evidence of Latino reluctance to vote for black candidates. Beyond the high level of Latino support for Obama in November 2008, any variation in expressions of racial resentment appears to have been unrelated to voter choice—in clear contradistinction to the findings for non-Hispanic whites.

Obama began his presidency with strong enthusiasm from the Latino electorate. Could he keep it?

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