Hispanic Romney Voters and 2016

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

It should be noted that 9.2 million Hispanics voted for Obama, and less than 3.5 million went for Romney. 1 million of those 3.5 million Hispanics were evangelicals. Even then, only 20% of Hispanic Evangelicals voted Republican. What few Hispanics still vote Republican are disproportionately evangelical, but even then they are still a significant minority within the Hispanic Evangelical community.

Hispanics, being more average on poor than the population as a whole, are still an economically sensitive class, and Republicans don't usually get their votes simply because of economics, in addition to perceived intolerance.

2004 was the exception, not the rule. I'm not entirely sure why Hispanics gave a much larger share of their vote to Bush, but I can guess:

Foreign policy was probably the biggest pull factor for Hispanics towards Bush (I mean, Hispanic people died during 9/11, did they not? Terrorists don't target white Americans exclusively; they target all Americans. Foreign policy matters a lot of minorities as well; our armed forces are less white than the country as a whole IIRC), and that was one of the defining issues of 2004.

Hispanics have roughly the same opinions on things like abortion, weed, and gay marriage (only a few points more conservative, but nothing significant) as the general population, and in 2004 support for gay marriage was only 30% and many anti-gay marriage laws made the ballot that year. I would guess that engagement and turnout was higher among Hispanic evangelicals in 2004 than against Mr. Corporate America & Self-Deportation Champion in 2012.

But as has been oft pointed out, Bush and the Republican Party made a concerted effort to reach out to Hispanic voters (actually, minority voters of all stripes), by specifically targeting them even in urban areas (something Romney never did). They didn't pitch just openness to immigration reform; they also pitched the homeowners' society Bush envisoned, two rounds of tax cuts, NCLB (which was still popular at the time), etc. It also helped Bush that year that he had increased funding for the sciences and championed environmental protection/clean-up laws, something that is toxic to the GOP today.

Rising affluence of Hispanics is correlated with decreased Republican voting; the last numbers I saw showed Hispanics becoming a plurality middle-class group in 2011, and Hispanic households making over $50,000 a year gave only about 52% of their votes to Obama in 2008 while those under regularly gave up to 80% of their votes to McCain. It is possible that Republicans could start winning more among more affluent and integrated Hispanics, but antagonism ala Romney and Trump will jeopardize that.

2004 was a very unique election with the issues and environment favoring the Republican Party on top of dedicated and intentional outreach to Hispanic voters (and not just them BTW). I seriously doubt Trump will improve on Romney's performance; they may gain more raw votes, but the percentage ain't goin' up.