Florida (SurveyUSA): Hillary leads Romney by 7

[pbrower2a]

That Hispanics of Cuban origin are approaching the voting patterns of other Hispanics indicates that the GOP is losing them.

It could be that Mitt Romney lost Florida in 2012 with the infamous Spanish-language ad that tried to connect President Obama to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez... but a 7% lead is much bigger than the margin of either Obama victory in Florida.  

(Sorry -- I misread the stats due to dirty glasses).

[pbrower2a]

That Hispanics of Cuban origin are approaching the voting patterns of other Hispanics indicates that the GOP is losing them.

In what way does this poll suggest that their voting patterns are converging?  They look pretty different in this poll.

From the poll:

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Cuban-Americans in Florida used to be a reliably-Republican voting bloc. Republicans can no longer rely upon the appeal that "Democrats are tools of Fidel Castro".

[pbrower2a]

That Hispanics of Cuban origin are approaching the voting patterns of other Hispanics indicates that the GOP is losing them.

In what way does this poll suggest that their voting patterns are converging?  They look pretty different in this poll.

From the poll:

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Cuban-Americans in Florida used to be a reliably-Republican voting bloc. Republicans can no longer rely upon the appeal that "Democrats are tools of Fidel Castro".

What are you talking about?  Romney has a huge lead among Cubans in that poll, according to the very numbers that you're quoting, while Clinton has a huge lead among non-Cuban Hispanics.

I discuss a change from the past in which most Cuban-Americans, at least in Florida, were reliable voters for Republicans in Presidential elections. Not all Hispanics in Florida are Cuban-Americans, and non-Cuban were never as amenable to GOP appeals that "Democrats are buddies of Fidel Castro". If one is a Mexican-American, is "Fidel Castro" as visceral a set of syllables as they were to someone who had fled Fidel Castro?

From the poll:

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This is very different from:

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I think that we are seeing Republicans show that they have become incompetent at making successful and relevant appeals to Hispanics of any kind, and the execrable performance of Republicans among Cuban-Americans shows that such a failure comes from a difference in culture. To be sure, "Cuban Hispanics" are no longer as lily-white as they were in the 1960s due to a large number of Afro-Cubans in the Mariel boat-lift.

But even without the racial angle, younger Cuban-Americans are peeling away from the GOP on economic and cultural issues that have nothing to do with opposition to Communism.  Democrats have learned to say nothing flattering about Fidel Castro. Culture matters, and Cuban-Americans are heavily Catholic. Catholics on the whole have little use for GOP pandering to Protestant fundamentalists on such superstition and pseudoscience as creationism.

 

[pbrower2a]

I misread it (dirty glasses!), inverting the approval. Glasses cleaned, I take back some of what I said as simply wrong.  But even so, Cuban-Americans in Florida used to vote something like 75-25 for Republicans.

Any erosion of support from any once-solid constituency hurts the Party that used to rely upon that constituency. So if the vote of unionized workers or Jews for a Democratic pol goes from 80% to 60%, then the Democrat has a problem -- most likely one that goes beyond unionized workers or Jews. Likewise, if the small-business-ownership vote for Republicans goes from 80% to 60%, then Republicans have a problem, one that may go beyond the specific vote. Erosion of the base is still one way to lose the next election.

Perhaps something can be changing in a constituency that once seemed natural. Maybe unionized workers are no longer the struggling "Norma Rae" and are now well-paid skilled workers who have developed some concern for a tax bite that they can rarely avoid. Maybe  the Republicans are better addressing dangers to Israel than the Democrats do at the time. On the other hand, small business may be seeing Republicans siding with Big Business to squeeze out competition from small business and Democrats less likely to do so. Go figure. Parties figure such out or must seek new constituencies.

Maybe Cuban-Americans are beginning to become less concerned with Communism as the younger ones have no personal link to the controversies about what to do with Fidel Castro. Remember: any Cuban-American who fled Cuba before 1964 is now at least 50. Maybe Cuban-Americans are beginning to assimilate into non-Cuban-American populations. Maybe the Cuban-American population in 2014 isn't as 'white' as the refugees of the early 1960s (Mariel boatlift).
   
56-37 looks solid enough, but if it is down from 75-22 or so, then the Republicans have a problem in Florida.   

[pbrower2a]

56-37 looks solid enough, but if it is down from 75-22 or so, then the Republicans have a problem in Florida.   

When was it 75-22?  Do you have a citation for this?  The exit polls don't usually break it down between "Cuban" and "other Hispanic".

Probably until about 1990.