Be wary of people who tell you what Florida’s Latino vote will be

At some point Tuesday night when you hear results from the Florida primary election, somebody is bound to try to supplement it by giving you figures that purport to be the Latino/Hispanic/Cubano/whatever vote for the Republican presidential dreamers.

ROMNEY: Not really the Latino leader

Heck, there’s even a poll that has been out there in recent days that says Latinos in Florida prefer Mitt Romney over Newt Gingrich by a ratio of seven to four.

I’M SURE SOMEONE is going to try to claim that whatever figures the exit polls produce is the evidence that this particular GOPer is the preference of Latino voters.

This is the person who’s going to take away the Latino support that was influential in Barack Obama getting elected as president in the 2008 election cycle.

This is the evidence that Latinos are realizing that the Republican Party is our salvation – the ones that are going to help us rise from our current status into something approaching civilization.

Nonsense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I HAVE NO doubt that some people who have ethnic origins in a Latin American country who are registered to vote in Florida will pick a Republican ballot and cast a vote for one of the tontos seeking the GOP nomination for U.S. president.

GINGRICH: Keep trying



But I’m also pretty sure that a larger number of Latinos will have no interest in casting a Republican primary ballot. Which means some presidential candidate is going to claim to have a Latino majority of support, when in reality the majority will be those who don’t want any of these payasos in office.

Take that poll I referenced earlier – the one commissioned by the Univision television network that says 35 percent of Latinos want Romney, compared to 20 percent for Gingrich – with the rest of the Republican field getting so little support they may as well not exist.

That still means the bulk of Latinos don’t want any of these people. They’d rather have either an apathetic Obama (which he has been on many issues of concern to the Latino segment of society), or they may decide not to vote at all.

TAKE THAT SAME poll by Latino Decisions (a group that does studies trying to determine where the Latino segment stands on many issues). An Obama/Gingrich campaign would see Obama take70 percent of the Latino vote, while Romney would hold Obama to “only” 67 percent Latino voter support.

OBAMA: Winner, by default?

This could even happen in Florida, where the latest figures from the Pew Hispanic Center show that more Florida-based Latinos are registered to vote as Democrats (564,513) compared to Republicans (452,619) – continuing a trend that has been continuing for the past six years.

My point in all of this being that you are going to hear a statistic telling you who “won” the Latino vote in the Republican presidential primary on Tuesday. It will even be an accurate figure – and not completely worthless for studying.



Yet the truth is that many Latinos probably didn’t vote in that primary, no matter what Marco Rubio says or thinks – and many across the nation may be seeing their “voice” as being expressed on Nov. 6 when the bulk of Latinos vote against whomever the Republican Party nominates to run against Obama.

IN SHORT, MY ethnic brethren will be voting against the candidate whose rhetoric offends them more than Obama’s inactivity. We’re going to vote for the candidate who we hate the least – which is how many people will be voting in this particular election cycle.

Which means we may have well assimilated politically into society as a whole.

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