"Romney won't get Bush's numbers among Latino voters"
One thing I've never understood about American elections (or maybe, about most elections anywhere) is that people spend so much time, energy and attention following campaigns but don't seem to spend much if any on the actual outcome of an election, i.e., how the votes are counted and how an outcome is verified.
So this morning, a Latino media organization I follow wrote that "Romney won't get Bush's numbers among Latino voters" as if Bush's Latino vote was a target to shoot for. The folks at Latism were probably thinking of the Mitofsky poll that claimed Little Boots got 44% of the Latino vote in 2004.
Of course, this turned out to be a crock and was debunked by the William C. Velasquez Institute at the time. Bush got about 31% in 2000 and maybe a couple of more points in 2004, but the Mitofsky number was flogged relentlessly by the Bush campaign and parroted all over the media. It's still being parroted and today, by a leading Latino media group that should know better.
(DUers who were here in 2004 and who tried to sift that election may remember the inflated Latino vote numbers as one of a whole group of fables we were fed by the right wing "mainstream" media. I remember that, in the Election Reform Forum, we looked for those mysterious "Values voters" who we were told put Bush over the top and we couldn't find them anywhere. Not among Latinos, not among women, not in the military, not among black voters. They seemed to vanish as soon as the election was called. I tend to think they were buried in Ohio with the recount under Ken Blackwell's Everest of bullshit.)
My takeaway this morning is that Latism is right, although not in the way its editors think. RMoney will not only not get Bush's fictional 44%, he likely won't get Bush's real 31+/-% from Latino voters. And, of course, we need to scrutinize the result pushed by the Republicans because we know from experience they believe they can sell their own private "reality" about Latino voters and expect it to be accepted almost without question by everyone, including activists in the Latino media.
Fwiw
(In anticipation of another round of fabulous reports about the Latino vote this year, here are two corrective links to put in your back pocket.)
http://www.latinodecisions.com/blog/2010/11/04/how-the-national-exit-poll-badly-missed-the-latino-vote-in-2010/
http://www.vdare.com/articles/bush-didnt-win-44-of-hispanic-vote-the-smoking-exit-poll
= new reply since forum marked as read
flashback:
George Bush--all three generations of him--wants to woo Hispanic voters. Scarcely a week goes by when the Texas Governor--George W.--isn't hola-ing and comos estas-ing his way through a Hispanic community center or a classroom filled with Hispanic children. And late last week in New York City, his campaign released its first television ads of the general election--ads starring GEORGE P. BUSH, the candidate's charismatic 23-year-old Mexican-American nephew, in a direct pitch to New York's Puerto Rican voting bloc. The star turn will not be his last. "You're going to be seeing a lot more of him," beams a campaign adviser.
Even George H.W. Bush--the patriarch of the namesakes--is getting into the swing of things. Sources tell TIME that the former President, who once famously referred to his Mexican-American grandchildren, including George P., as "the little brown ones," recently urged his son's campaign to hold a national Hispanic event aimed at luring Hispanics away from the Democrats. The way things are going, the Republican Convention will be a fiesta de la familia.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,997196,00.html
