McCain's support boost does NOT include Latinos

It’s kind of hard to cover the 2008 presidential election from the Latino perspective, since it appears the Latino voter bloc is solidly in the camp of Democrat Barack Obama.

The fact that Republican challenger John McCain has done significantly better in recent polls and appears to be showing signs of political life is irrelevant to the Latino vote, which the McCain campaign likes to say is a natural for them.

“LATINOS KNOW JOHN McCain,” spokeswoman Hessy Fernandez told reporter-types in response to recent studies showing McCain making little to no headway in getting the Latino vote that George W. Bush likes to say he got 44 percent of in 2004 (he actually got about 36 percent, but that’s a different story).

What got the McCain people riled up was a study by a Miami-based political consultant, Sergio Bendixen, who likes to focus his efforts on studying the Latino voters to determine just how much influence they truly have in electoral outcomes.

His latest study released this week showed that in states where Latinos comprise at least 10 percent of the population, Obama does well with the Latino vote – even if he loses overall or is in a tight competition with Anglo voters.

That situation exists in some of the key states where the two major presidential campaigns are expected to be competitive in seeking the electoral college votes.

THAT IS THE case with Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, which largely have been Republican-leaning states in recent years – even though Al Gore managed to win New Mexico’s 5 electoral votes in 2000.

Bendixen’s study claims that Obama leads the Latino voter bloc in all three states, even though he narrowly loses Anglo voters in Nevada and New Mexico and has only the slightest of leads overall in Colorado.

Now such a study is more significant than a lot of the polls that issue nationwide figures. Even when they break down their results by ethnicity, they are still giving us national averages.

Yet as anyone who remembers the 2000 presidential election will never forget, we don’t have national elections in this country. We have 50 sets of state elections for national offices.

THAT MAKES THE Electoral College figure all the more important.

So despite recent polls by the Gallup Organization that claim the McCain campaign has held significant leads over Obama for the past four days (his best showing since May), the Electoral College count shows a different story – one where Obama is tantalizingly close to being able to say he has won this election.

I noticed the Zogby International study of Electoral College votes, which on Thursday showed Obama winning enough states to have 260 electors on his side – only 10 short of winning the election.

And two of the states that Zogby indicates are “too close to call” are Colorado and Nevada – which means a strong Latino vote for Obama could win him those states, get him those electors and push him over the hump to an Election Day victory.

OF COURSE, THAT’S a big IF. McCain is starting to get the conservative ideologues to take him seriously, what with the right-wing rhetoric of running mate Sarah Palin seeming appealing and the possibility of an Obama victory becoming more a reality to them. But McCain still has some serious obstacles to overcome – among them the fact that the Latino vote leans toward Obama largely because they have come to see the Republican alternative as too repulsive to support.

That is why poll after poll shows McCain (the guy who likes to think his past immigration reform policies that he now repudiates will get him Hispanic votes) lagging among Latinos.

The latest Gallup poll showed a Latino voter breakdown of 60 percent for Obama and 31 percent for McCain, in the days after the allegedly successful Republican National Convention that GOPers will claim permanently changed the tide of the nation.

Considering that in the days right before the Republican convention and just after the Democratic spectacle in Denver where Obama was riding high (as much as an 8 percent lead over McCain nationally), Obama had 64 percent of the Latino voter bloc support, compared to only 24 percent for McCain.

IN FACT, THAT 31 percent of the Latino voter bloc that McCain allegedly has now is his high point when it comes to Hispanic support. During the summer months, there have been times it has dropped to as little as 20 percent, while Obama at times has had as much as 68 percent Latino voter support.

There was one other figure from the Bendixen study that caught my attention – the fourth state he focused on.

Florida.

The state that in 2000 was Ground Zero for the political and legal fight that ultimately got Bush the younger the first of his two terms as president and was solidly in the Republican camp in 2004 is no longer so solidly red.

FLORIDA IS THE place where the aging Miami Cuban voter bloc likes to take credit for Bush’s victory, claiming their solid support pushed him over the edge statewide. Yet according to the Bendixen study, in Florida, Obama and McCain are tied both for the Latino voter bloc (42 percent each) and the overall vote (43 percent each).

So where does this election stand?

Neither candidate ought to be getting cocky. Both of them have some serious work ahead of them in the coming two months if they wish to be the person who gets to live at taxpayer expense at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., for at least the next four years.

And if it turns out to be McCain who wins, it is going to be because he overcame a serious deficit of support from the growing Latino population.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Looking at the upcoming presidential elections from an Electoral College (http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/2008/9/10/presidential_polls_latinos_favor_obama_in.htm) perspective shows Barack Obama with an advantage, but not having yet clinched victory.

Gallup Organization has compiled its Hispanic vote breakdown for the past several weeks (http://www.gallup.com/poll/108040/Candidate-Support-Race.aspx).