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Pew Hispanic Center
Parsing the '06 Latino Vote
Hispanic Voters Returned to their '02 Pattern in Supporting Democrats
Widely cited findings from the national exit polls suggest Latinos tilted heavily Democratic in the 2006 election, taking back most of the support they had granted the Republicans just two years earlier. Does that mean the Latinos who flirted with the Republican Party are now firmly back in the Democratic camp? Or is it possible that Latino voters behaved like the rest of the electorate and simply rode the wave?
This year, interest in the Latino vote was driven in great part by the immigration debate and its possible effects on the election. Would more Latinos register and vote? Would Latinos punish the Republicans for the immigration position held by hardliners in that party? Would Democrats benefit as a result?
Looking at the numbers from the exit polls, conducted on Election Day on behalf of a consortium of news organizations, some have concluded that the immigration debate was central to the Latino vote and that it hurt the Republican Party. But the same exit polls also point towards two other possible conclusions: The shift towards the Democrats this year may not have been as dramatic as it seems at first glance. And, several prominent Republican candidates actually took a relatively large share of the Hispanic vote.
The 2006 national exit poll showed that in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, 69% of Latinos voted for Democrats compared with 30% who supported Republican candidates. A national estimate derived from analysis of exit polls in Senate and gubernatorial races around the country shows essentially the same division of partisan preferences. Meanwhile, exit polls conducted in eight states with large Hispanic populations by the William C. Velazquez Institute, a non-partisan think tank, estimated that Latino voters favored Democrats 67% to 29% in congressional races nationwide.
Comparing 2006 and 2004 exit polls suggest an 11-point swing among Latinos in favor of the Democrats. Meanwhile, the swing among white voters was only 6 percent. But comparing this year's mid-term election with the previous mid-term election in 2002 shows that the Democratic gains among Latinos and whites were of roughly the same dimensions. The 2006-2002 comparison suggests that Latino voters this year did not behave distinctively but rather reflected a broader political trend that was evident in the same dimensions among whites.