The GOP's Hispanic Voter Gap

A new poll has even more bad news for the GOP: 50% of Hispanic voters consider themselves Democrats with only 15% identifying as Republicans.

A new AP/Univision poll shows that Hispanics back Democrats far more than they do Republicans.  If the GOP doesn’t do something about this weak support, the party will struggle to return to majority status.

Anyone who cares about making the Republican party a majority party again will need to address two figures that come out of the survey. First, the poll found that a mind boggling 50% of the 1,500-plus Hispanics surveyed consider themselves Democrats, with only a meager 15% identifying as Republicans. With the polls 3.5 point margin of error, the best conceivable scenario for Republicans is that the Democrats get only 46.5%, while Republicans score 18.5%,  which is still a 28 percentage point support gap among the fastest growing voter pool in the country. If Republicans don't close this margin significantly in the coming years, forget about forming a “new majority”. We will be lucky to form a big minority.

Luckily, the second figure every Republican should take note of provides a prescription for cutting into the Democratic lead among Hispanic voters. 41% of Hispanic voters said that they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is Hispanic. The RNC and local state parties need to start recruiting far more Hispanic Republicans to run for office at all levels of government.

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