Hispanics support Democrats, but without much enthusiasm

Washington, Agency
Nearly two-thirds of Latino voters in the United States say they support Democratic candidates in the November legislative elections, but just one in three of them is showing much interest in the balloting, according to a study published Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.

The solidity of the Latinos' general support is good news for the Democratic Party in the Nov. 2 election, where all the seats in the House of Representatives are in play, along with one-third of the Senate and more than two dozen state governorships.

But the survey conducted among 1,375 adult Latinos - among which were 618 registered voters - and carried out between Aug. 17 and Sept. 19 with an error margin of plus or minus 3.3 percent shows that the lack of motivation among Hispanics could play itself out to the detriment of the Democrats.

Sixty-five percent of registered Hispanic voters said that they would prefer the Democratic candidates for Congress compared with 22 percent who favor the Republicans.

Among the voters in the general population, 47 percent express a preference for the Democrats and 44 percent for the Republicans, according to another Pew Research Center survey.

The preference among Latinos for the Democratic Party remains nearly as strong as that which the party enjoyed in 2008 when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, a Democrat, obtained 67 percent of the Hispanic vote compared to the 31 percent garnered by Republican John McCain.

The survey shows that just 32 percent of registered Latino voters say that they "have paid much attention" to these elections so far, compared to 50 percent of the voters in the general population.

While 70 percent of all registered voters say that they will definitely vote in November, just 51 percent of registered Latino voters say they intend to go to the polls.

It's not just that: while only 28 percent of Democratic Latinos expressed their intention to vote, 44 percent of Republican Hispanics said that on Nov. 2 they would cast ballots.

According to the survey, President Obama continues to be more popular among Latinos, with 63 percent support, than among the general population, where his approval rating is 47 percent.

Despite that, 51 percent of the people surveyed by Pew said that the policies put in place by Obama since he got to the White House in January 2009 have had little affect on Latinos.

Just 26 percent believe that Obama has helped Hispanics and 13 percent think that he has hurt them.

The survey outlines a sense of disenchantment among Latinos with the Democrats: in 2008, 55 percent of Hispanic voters believed that it was the Democratic Party that was more concerned about the problems of Latinos, compared with just 6 percent who felt that way about the Republican Party.

In the recent survey, the perception of the Democrats as a party that is more attentive to Latinos had fallen to 47 percent, while the same percentage as before thought that Republicans cared more about issues affecting Hispanics.

In the middle of this year, the passage of an Arizona state law criminalizing the presence of undocumented immigrants sparked debate about immigration. But the survey among Hispanic voters showed that immigration is not the greatest priority for Latinos.

Registered Hispanic voters said that their main concerns are education, jobs and healthcare.