Romney's comeback was Hispanics

[King]

In 2008, a lot of people were talking about lower conservative enthusiasm or more women for Obama yadda yadda yadda.  But to me, the shift from a 2004 Bush 51-48 win to a 2008 46-53 Obama win came mostly in one obvious sweeping change of a demographic: My demographic.

Hispanics moved from 54-45 Kerry to 67-31 Obama.   Hispanic voting has been increasing election to election.  It's hard to say exactly what a 13% swing from Republican to Democrat was in volume.  It's believed about 15 million voted in 2004 and 16 million 2008.  Even if Obama won all 1 million new voters, that's still just 56-44.  McCain had to have lost a lot.

67% of 16 million is around 10.7 (+2.6) million for Obama to 5.3 (-1.5) million for McCain.  So, mathematically, one could estimate that 1.5-2.0 million 2004 Bush Hispanic supporters voted for Obama. 

If Kerry had done as well as Obama with Hispanics in 2004, he would have won the popular vote.  At 252 a combination of Hispanic rich New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado (19) or a win in Florida (27) would have also won him the electoral college.

So, let's talk Obama-Romney with Hispanics.
It was kind of a foregone conclusion that Romney had lost this demographic early.
70-21 were polls at the beginning of the summer with this group.  It actually looked like he would do worse than McCain.  To me, and I said it many many many times this year, it meant Romney no shot at winning this election. 

And, for most of the year, he hasn't had a shot.  Since the debates, however, he has had a shot to win this election.  So, what happened? 

I haven't really thought about Hispanics until today.  I just kept assuming Obama was blowing them out and the reason Romney got back into the race was increased Republican enthusiasm among whites and all those other generic reasons.  Obama's camp seems to think that, too.  There's another thread on the forum right now about how they think 72% white projected electorate will doom Romney.  But I happened to notice something in today's new PPP national poll:

PPP 10/25 Obama +1


37%.  Mitt Romney is closing back in on Bush era 40%+ Hispanic support.  Outlier?

Politico 10/18 Romney +2



Even better for Romney.  Two outliers?  Unlikely.  What's going on?  How long has it been like this? Let's see if we can spot the pre/post-debate trend.  Unfortunately, there's no PPP or Politico data on this I can find before October.  Here's SurveyUSA instead:

SurveyUSA 9/16 Obama +7



That's Romney favorability on the right.  -39 head to head and -31 in opinion.  Really, really bad numbers pre-debates, but then again a lot of people with no opinions formed.

Post-debates...

SurveyUSA 10/22 Romney +3



We're an impressionable people.

[King]

Latino Decisions , the gold standard of Latino polling says otherwise.

Well, 1 being right against 4 is unlikely.  An advantage it does have is that it is a full poll which targets Hispanics specifically, while these are subsampled.  Subsample margin of error shouldn't really account for 20-30% shifts, though.

If Obama is still really in the mid-60s with Hispanics, then that means Obama's support in these polls are understated.  If Obama gets back into the mid 60s in Hispanics who turnout, he'll win.   If Romney can touch 40, it's quite possible he will win.

A movement of Hispanics more than any other group could also explain why Romney has not made huge inroads in Ohio (only 3% Hispanic) during this bump yet Colorado, Florida, Nevada are starting to move closer.  The most recent California poll shows Romney at 41%. Even Virginia and North Carolina are 8-9% Latino states, far more than Ohio.