EthnicMajority

(Washington Post) Once thought to have a potential liability in appealing to Hispanics, Mitt Romney appears to have overcome his doubters.

One of Romney’s more remarkable turnarounds in the Florida primary between 2008 and 2012 was among the state’s many Hispanic voters. While he increased his vote share overall by 12 points, from 31 percent to 43 percent, he increased his performance among Hispanics by 40, from 14 percent in 2008 to 54 percent on Tuesday, according to exit polls.

That’s a pretty huge improvement, but how much does it mean going forward?

In reality, Romney’s tiny share of the Hispanic vote in 2008 seemed to be at least partially about who he was running against, versus any issues Hispanics had with him.

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(Huffington Post) The Republican Party is beefing up its minority outreach nationwide and preparing to put its rising Latino stars on the campaign trail amid concerns that tough immigration rhetoric in the presidential primary is taking on an increasingly anti-Hispanic tone.

But immigrant-rights groups and some political watchers say the damage may be irreversible. They argue that the GOP has severely hampered itself as it looks to woo the critical Latino voting bloc that could decide who wins key states like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida next fall.

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(Boston Globe) President Obama is well positioned to repeat his strong performance with Hispanic voters one year before the 2012 election, according to a new Univision News/Latino Decisions poll.

In head-to-head matchups with the top three GOP presidential candidates, Obama holds substantial leads that exceed a two-to-one margin in every case. Latino voters prefer Obama 67 percent to 24 percent over Mitt Romney, 65 percent to 22 percent over Herman Cain, and 68 percent to 21 percent over Rick Perry.

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(Washington Post) Four years ago in Iowa, Republican caucus-goers chose illegal immigration as the most important issue facing the country. The issue of how to deal with more than 10 million unauthorized immigrants is not playing a central role in the 2012 GOP race. But fresh numbers from the Pew Hispanic Center reveal that Republicans have made little progress since 2008 in courting a fast-growing Hispanic voting bloc, two-thirds of whom voted for Barack Obama.

In their basic political party identification – the continental plates of American politics – 67 percent of Hispanics identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with 20 percent who lean toward Republicans. The 47-point Democratic advantage is larger than at any point in more than a decade of polls, including 2008, when 26 percent of Hispanics sided with the Republican Party. As we noted Thursday, Obama leads Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney by 68 to 23 percent among Hispanic voters in a hypothetical general election match-up.

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(Los Angeles Times) Immigration advocates in Texas were heartened last year when the Republican governor, Rick Perry, flatly stated that Arizona's crackdown on illegal immigrants "would not be the right direction for Texas."

But in June, Perry convened a special session of the Legislature, hoping to pass a measure outlawing sanctuary cities — places where police are not allowed to ask people they detain about immigration status.

The law, which had already failed during the Legislature's regular session, was defeated a second time thanks to an opposition coalition that included immigration activists as well as law enforcement officials, evangelical pastors and Republican business owners, among them one of Perry's biggest fundraisers.

Why did the governor push the ban in a state where no official sanctuary cities even exist? Many in Texas, including Perry supporters, thought they knew the answer: He was considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination.

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(Examiner.com) According to the O'Reilly Factor, a high unemployment numbers plus heavy home foreclosures are leaving the black community struggling in higher proportions than the rest of the populace. These hard hitting economic woes may be responsible for diminishing President Obama's support among African Americans. In the black community. The latest Gallup poll shows the president is down a whopping 14 points from his once high of 95%.

Amid 17% unemployment for African Americans as well as 11% foreclosures for black homeowners, many think the real surprise is that President Obama's previous astounding 95% black community approval is still a solid 87%. Some of the questions the poll plunge raises include

Why is President Obama losing black voters? Can President Obama win the White House in 2012 with weakened support from the black community?

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(Huffington Post) It's official: Texas Governor Rick Perry has announced his candidacy for president of the United States, officially entering the race for the 2012 Republican nomination. The governor made his announcement Saturday at a conservative gathering in Charleston, S.C.

In his speech, Perry advocated for greater security along the U.S.-Mexico border and attacked the Obama Administration for failing to deliver promised jobs and economic growth. "That is not a recovery — that is an economic disaster," Perry said, referencing recent data that indicate 1 in 6 working-age citizens is unable to find full-time employment.

Perry said the most urgent priority for the country is to revitalize the economy, emphasizing, "It's time to get America working again." He criticized President Obama directly, saying the president has been responsible "for downgrading American jobs, downgrading our standing in the world, downgrading our financial stability, downgrading confidence and downgrading the hope of a better future for our children."

In the speech, Perry — who has held his post for 11 years, the most served by any sitting governor and the most by any governor of Texas — spoke of his childhood as the son of cotton sharecroppers in the small town of Paint Creek, Texas, and invoked his religious faith as a grounding and guiding force in his life.

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(CBS News) Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday made an appeal to Latino voters that conservatives are saying smacks of racial insensitivity.

At a Nevada campaign event with Latino supporters, Reid blasted Republicans for blocking comprehensive immigration reform, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.

“I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, OK,” Reid said. “Do I need to say more?”

Conservatives are pushing back on that remark, at a time when immigration reform has become an increasingly divisive issue. It could be a particularly important issue in Nevada, where Hispanics make up about 25 percent of the state population and accounted for 15 percent of the electorate in 2008, according to the Review-Journal.

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