According to the CW, Barack Obama ought to be struggling to win over America's Hispanic voters. In fact, he seems to be dominating the Latino demographic with relative ease - it's his opponent who's struggling to make up ground. I've posted my take over at Comment is free:
Many election watchers believe McCain still has a chance to claw back Latino support. After all, the argument goes, Hispanics are a historically volatile voting bloc and might well swing back toward McCain in the months ahead. It's true that about 40% of Latinos backed Bush in 2004; it's true, too, that Hispanic support helped steer Democrats to victory in the 2006 midterms. But while those shifts help perpetuate the myth that Latinos are swing voters, the truth is that they change their allegiance no more frequently than other demographic groups. Most Latinos - with the exception of Florida's strategically important Cuban-American population - remain true-blue Democrats and simply aren't in the market for another GOP president.It won't help that McCain's strategy for winning over Hispanics rests on puffing his track record on immigration reform, while raising concerns about Obama's trustworthiness on the issue. That's a risky gambit. McCain's trite reminders that even immigrants with Hispanic names "are God's children" might help placate his conservative base, but they won't do much for his support among Latino voters, barely a quarter of whom were born outside the US. Besides, polls consistently show that Hispanic voters - who are, by definition, already US citizens - care far less about immigration than about bread-and-butter issues like the economy and healthcare.
More here.
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