While drama ensues among the Republican presidential candidates, Obama and the Democrats have been pushed away from the limelight. However, a recent CNN poll shows that Latino registered voters favor Obama over Republican presidential hopefuls by a margin of more than 2-to-1, similar to the 67% Democrat, 31% Republican voter results for Latinos in the 2008 presidential election. The Latino voting bloc seems to continue its strong support of Obama despite dissatisfaction with the new deportation policies of the Obama administration. However, it seems that "ignorance is bliss" does play a part in this political game, as the survey results found that around 41% of the Hispanic respondents were aware that more deportations were occurring under the Obama administration than the preceding Bush administration. It's also interesting to note that although Hispanic voters have traditionally identified with the Democratic Party, "among the Latino voters, there is a lot of support for the Democrats, but also for Barack Obama. (Mark Hugo Lopez, executive director of the Pew Hispanic Center)
What are Obama's chances for the 2012 presidential election? Do you think that the coalition of political constituencies will remain the same for him this time around, or has the novelty of his Democratic platform rubbed off since the 2008 election campaign? Perhaps the wild goose chase to the White House exhibited by the Republican Party has given him a leg up in this year's campaign?
2 comments:
I don't think Obama's solid constituencies have changed much from the last go-around. However, I think that the idea of McCain's administration continuing the work of the administration brought a lot of people who normally wouldn't vote out to vote for Obama, as well as pushed some independent voters to vote Democrat. And now, with many people feeling let down by Obama, those groups might either fail to come out and vote, or decide to vote Republican this time.
It doesn't surprise me that more Latinos favor Obama and Democrats than Republicans as they generally favored Democrats historically. I also agree with Jesenia that Obama's constituencies generally have remained the same, although with the poor economy and the dissatisfaction of the new deportation policies, many Latinos could stray away from Obama.
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