Latino votes key to Obama's victory

Despite failing to deliver immigration reform as promised in his first term and deporting a record number of immigrants, President Barack Obama received 75 percent of the Latino vote in Tuesday's national election, exceeding the 67 percent he received in 2008.

The support likely played a major role in Obama's re-election -- and, conversely, in Republican nominee Mitt Romney's defeat, analysts say.

It could also serve as a catalyst to jump-start bipartisan talks on comprehensive immigration reform, which have stalled in Congress for more than a decade, analysts say.

For Obama and Democrats, the push makes sense: Their successes at the ballot box in recent years have been buoyed by Latino voters, and they have campaigned on the promise of immigration reform. For Republicans, many of whom have taken a hard-line anti-immigration stance in recent years that many Hispanic voters perceive to be anti-Latino, a push for reform could be politically advantageous.

"The Republican Party, the new guard, is going to be coming after those Latino voters because they know they need them to win an election," said Joe Garcia, director of the Latino Center at Arizona State University's Morrison Institute for Public Policy. "I still think this is going to be the decade of the Latino because both parties are going to be courting the Latino vote."

Statistics show how critical the Latino vote was in Tuesday's presidential election. For the first time in history, the Latino vote can plausibly be credited with playing the decisive role in a presidential election, said Gary Segura, a political-science professor at Stanford University and a principal at the polling firm Latino Decisions.

If the estimated 11.8 million Latinos who voted nationally on Tuesday had split their votes evenly between the two parties, Obama would not have won, Segura said Wednesday in a computer conference call.

Latinos played a pivotal roll in several battleground states, including Colorado, Nevada, Virginia and Ohio, that went for Obama, helping him gain the electoral votes needed to defeat Romney, Segura said.

Garcia said Latinos' overwhelming support for Obama showed they were willing to "forgive him" for failing to pass immigration reform and for deporting a record number of illegal immigrants. What helped, Garcia said, was Obama's announcement in June that he would allow young undocumented immigrants to receive work permits and remain in the country temporarily without the fear of deportation under a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

"I think they gave him a little bit of a benefit of the doubt and said, 'OK, we are going to forgive you for not keeping your promise on that first term but fully we expect something happening early in this second term,' and I think Obama will push for immigration reform in this term," Garcia said.

A Latino Decisions/America's Voice poll of 5,600 voters in 11 states, including Arizona, found that Obama's stance on immigration helped him win support among Latino voters who were turned off by Romney's stance.

Romney opposed allowing illegal immigrants to gain legal status and opposed the Dream Act, a bill that would allow young undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship by attending college or serving in the military. Romney also supported Arizona's employer-sanctions law, which requires all employers to use a federal database to check whether new hires are authorized to work in the U.S.

In Arizona, Obama's support among Latino voters skyrocketed from 56 percent in 2008, when Arizona Sen. John McCain was the Republican nominee, to 79 percent this year, according to the Latino Decisions/America's Voice poll.

But he still lost Arizona to Romney by 11 percentage points, unofficial results show. That margin could narrow when all 602,000 uncounted provisional and early ballots in the state are tabulated in the coming days.

Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, an immigrant-advocacy group in Washington, D.C., that pushes comprehensive immigration reform, said he believed some Republicans in the Democrat-controlled Senate would likely be willing to work with Obama and Senate Democrats to pass bipartisan immigration reform.

"They know their chances of wining the White House in 2016 will be lower without the support of Latino voters," Sharry said.

In 2006, McCain helped lead a bipartisan attempt to pass immigration reform, followed by an attempt in 2007 led by Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl. Both failed.

Rep. Jeff Flake, a six-term GOP congressman who on Tuesday was elected to replace the retiring Kyl, once was a strong advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. In 2012, he pivoted to a position that would require border-security upgrades to the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector.

While he still wants any solution to include enhanced border-security measures, Flake told The Arizona Republic on Wednesday that an effort "to effectively deal with the Dream Act issue" likely could pass easily with strong bipartisan support.

"I remain convinced that as Republicans we've got to do more on this issue, not just because it's good policy, but because it's obviously necessary politics as well," he said. "When you look at demographics, we cannot continue as Republicans to alienate such a significant portion of the electorate."

Kareem Crayton, a political scientist and associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, said Democrats and Republicans both have something to gain from revisiting immigration reform.

"If the Democrats intend to extend their level of support from the Latino community, they're going to have to make good on this," Crayton said. "They can't fail at this."

For their part, Republicans need to come to terms with demographic challenges, he said.

"I thought they would have recognized this four years ago, but ginning up the White vote just won't do the trick," Crayton said. "They're not going to be a successful national party if they are simply going to try to compete between the lines of the Old Confederacy. It's just not going to work. ... The numbers just aren't there for them, and the largest and fastest-growing population among the non-White groups are Latinos."

Poll results

A Latino Decisions/America's voice poll of 5,600 voters in 11 states, including Arizona, found that 66 percent of Latino voters said they felt like President Barack Obama cared about the Latino community while 74 percent of Latinos thought Republican candidate Mitt Romney didn't care about the Latino community or considered him hostile to Latinos.

While the poll showed that Latinos overwhelming supported Obama over Romney in Arizona, efforts to dramatically increase the number of Latino voters in Arizona appear to have fallen short.

Before the election, the National Association of Latino Elected Officials projected that 359,000 Latinos would vote in Arizona's general election, up from 291,000 in 2008.

Early estimates based on exit polls show that about 300,000 Latinos voted in Arizona this year out of a total of about 1.6 million votes cast, said Evan Bacalao, senior director of civic engagement at NALEO.

Petra Falcon, director of Promise Arizona, an organization that worked to increase the number of Latino voters in Arizona, said it is too early to tell how many Latinos voted in Arizona because of the thousands of provisional ballots that haven't been counted.

Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., won election to the Senate with 17 percent of the Latino vote in Arizona, according to the Latino Decisions/America's Voice poll. His Democratic opponent, former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, who is a Latino of Puerto Rican descent, received 83 percent of the Latino vote in Arizona. Flake defeated Carmona by less than 5 percentage points, according to unofficial results.

by Daniel González, and Dan Nowicki - Nov. 7, 2012 The Republic | azcentral.com Latino votes key to Obama's victory