Lisa Falkenberg drops the following tidbit in her post-election column on why the GOP in general and in Texas needs to figure out how to appeal to Latino voters.
In Texas, the best data so far show a 70-30 split for Obama among Hispanic voters, according to Rice University political science chairman Mark Jones. Romney performed several points worse than Sen. John McCain did in 2008. At the same time, Jones points out, Hispanics became a larger share of the vote in Texas, going from 20 percent in 2008 to 25 percent in 2012.
Republican Ted Cruz, who will become the first Hispanic U.S. senator from Texas, may have received a boost linked to his surname. Exit polling showed he outperformed Romney and Republican congressional candidates by 6 percent.
In the long run, Republicans can’t rely on surnames to appeal to Hispanics, although a few more on the ballot wouldn’t hurt.
“They’re going to have to reach out and do more than say that ‘Hispanics have values that are similar to ours.’ That’s an old refrain, which apparently is not bearing any fruit with the Hispanic population,” says Tatcho Mindiola, associate sociology professor and director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston.
Falkenberg doesn’t say what exit polls she was looking at. The Latino Decisions poll of Texas only asked about the Presidential race and Democrats in general, so it’s of no help here. Be that as it may, we can approach this question by comparing how Cruz did in heavily Latino counties to how Romney did. Here’s how he fared in the five counties I looked at last week.
County Obama Romney Sadler Cruz
==========================================
Cameron 49,159 24,955 41,930 27,881
El Paso 112,273 56,517 101,467 59,237
Hidalgo 97,879 39,786 88,316 41,591
Maverick 8,302 2,171 6,550 2,674
Webb 37,592 11,074 30,431 14,943
Some of Paul Sadler’s dropoff in votes from President Obama can be attributed to the usual downballot effect, but clearly Cruz outperformed Romney, and given his higher vote totals there had to be some Obama/Cruz voters in each of these counties. In fact, if you look at all of the counties in Texas where Cruz received more votes than Romney, you get the following list: Webb, Cameron, Ellis, Hidalgo, Maverick, Willacy, Starr, Zapata, Zavala, Dimmit, Kleberg, Jim Hogg, Brooks, Jim Wells, Frio, Culberson. So yes, he did do better in heavily Latino areas, and I’m sure I’ll find the same effect in Harris County when I get precinct data.
There’s a bit more to this, however. It wasn’t just Cruz who benefited from being Latino and having a non-Latino opponent in these counties. For example, the Libertarian candidate running against Railroad Commissioner Barry Smitherman was a Latino. Take a look at how he did versus how other non-Latino Libertarians did in statewide races where the Republican had no Democratic opponent. Here’s Cameron County, for example.
Railroad Commissioner - Unexpired Term
Barry Smitherman REP 25,866 48.72%
Jaime O. Perez LIB 23,875 44.97%
Josh Wendel GRN 3,347 6.30%
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 2
Don Willett REP 32,963 62.76%
Roberto Koelsch LIB 19,555 37.23%
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 4
John Devine REP 30,797 58.42%
Tom Oxford LIB 17,212 32.65%
Charles Waterbury GRN 4,707 8.92%
Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals Place 7
Barbara Hervey REP 32,107 61.09%
Mark W. Bennett LIB 20,448 38.90%
Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals Place 8
Elsa Alcala REP 36,619 68.72%
William Strange LIB 16,664 31.27%
The same pattern holds for El Paso, Hidalgo, Maverick, and Webb counties. In the latter two, Libertarian candidate Perez scored a majority of the vote against Smitherman, which just blows my mind, and you will see the same effect for Latino Democratic candidates for the Fourth Court of Appeals, all of whom wound up winning. These were all low-profile, low-information races – even the Senate race was mostly below the radar, with Cruz avoiding debates and not running many ads, while Sadler barely had the money to do any advertising – so it’s not too shocking. Because of all this, I’d be careful about drawing any firm conclusions regarding Cruz and Latino voters. Latino voters have a stronger belief in the role of government and by a sizable majority support the Affordable Care Act and believe that the federal government should ensure that all people have access to health insurance. Needless to say, these views are incompatible with those of Ted Cruz. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait till 2018 to see how these voters will behave when they have a fuller understanding of what Ted Cruz is about.
UPDATE: Latino Decisions did ask about the Senate race specifically, and you can see the result here, which shows Sadler leading Cruz 65-35. I didn’t see that at the time I wrote this post.
The Latino Decisions Election Eve Poll of Texas asked about both the specific presidential (Obama or Romney) and U.S. Senate (Cruz or Sadler) candidates. For the U.S. House it asked about support for either the Democratic or Republican candidate, which makes perfect sense, as the respondents were spread among 36 distinct U.S. House districts. The six percent gap between Cruz and Romney is noteworthy, especially when one takes into account the prevalence of straight-ticket voting in Texas.
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