Politic365 Staff

November 26, 2011 | Polls

How Much Do Latino Voters Know the GOP?

We’d be remiss not to take a quick look at the Latino Decisions/Univision poll taken a few weeks ago, which in our eyes remains somewhat relevant given much of the GOP primary buzz over immigration. But, more interestingly, there’s some kernel of compelling information in there about Latino attitudes toward Republican front runners that’s worth taking a step back and looking more closely at. Mitt Romney appears to have that edge among Latino voters sampled in the survey, which will present questions about the level of his Latino support in relation to brown support for President Obama.

Gabriel Sanchez of Latino Decisions notes:

Turning our attention to the Latino sample, we see that Mitt Romney has more support from Latino registered voters, particularly Latino Republicans, relative to Cain and Perry. Furthermore, a large segment of the Latino electorate indicate that they are undecided on who they prefer among these candidates, which has resulted in lower overall support levels for the front-runners at this point in the campaign.

The survey also includes a favorability battery for the President and all of the major contenders for the GOP nomination. We again display results for both the full and Latino samples. As we see in the table below, President Obama has much higher approval ratings among Latino registered voters than he does from the general public- 70% favorability among Latinos compared to only 53% in the general public. There is also a much larger gap in favorability between the President and all of the GOP candidates among Latinos than we see in the full sample. For example, while President Obama enjoys a nearly 50 percentage point favorability advantage over all Republican contenders, there is only a 14 point gap between President Obama and the most favorable GOP candidates (Cain and Romney) among the general voting population.

Another major finding from the survey is the lack of general familiarity with the Republican presidential candidates among the Latino electorate. Even if we isolate the three front-runners, a robust 35% of Latino registered voters had “never heard of” Herman Cain at the time of the survey, 25% “never heard of” Mitt Romney, and 19% “never heard of” Rick Perry.

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Fast forward and take a look at another Latino Decision/Univision survey and we’ll find an overall lack of national familiarity with potential Republican VP candidates such as New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Perhaps that will change heading further into 2012 and if the GOP’s nominee decides to pick either Martinez or Rubio. But, for now, these two aren’t registering as heavy as once thought. Notes Sanchez:

New Mexico’s Republican Governor Susana Martinez is not well known among the general voting population, as nearly half of the sample indicates that they have “never heard of” her, with another 30% indicating that they do not know enough about her yet to have an opinion. Furthermore, although slightly more Latinos view Governor Martinez favorably when compared to the full sample, a robust 38% have “never heard of” the first Latina to be elected governor in U.S. history. Latino voters in the Southwest are more familiar with Martinez, 34% of Latinos in this region have “never heard” of her, and 23% are either “very” or “somewhat” favorable of the Governor from New Mexico. These data suggest that Susana Martinez does not have the name recognition, at least at this point, to mobilize Latino voters if chosen as the GOP Vice Presidential candidate.

Attitudes toward Senator Marco Rubio are remarkably similar to those discussed for Martinez. As depicted in the figure below, 43% of the national electorate has “never heard of” Rubio, with another 26% yet to formulate an opinion about the Cuban American Senator. However, Rubio appears to have greater traction with Latino voters than Martinez at this point in the election season. Favorability of Rubio is higher among Latino voters than they are for Martinez (26% compared to 16%), and fewer Latinos have “never heard of” Senator Rubio. The comparative advantage for Rubio is most apparent when we look specifically at Republican identifiers within both the full and Latino samples. For example, while only 14% of Republicans in the full sample have favorable attitudes toward Martinez, a more impressive 30% of Republicans in the full sample are either “somewhat” or “very” favorable toward Rubio. There is a similar, yet more pronounced, pattern among Latino Republicans. A robust 56% of Latino Republicans are favorable toward Rubio, 40% “very” favorable, compared to only 16% who are either “somewhat” or “very” favorable toward Governor Martinez.

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