Donald Trump Gets Less Support From Latino Voters Than Mitt Romney Did

Contrary to his claims, Donald Trump would not win the Latino vote if he were the nominee. In fact, it looks like he’d end up doing much, much worse.

Doug Mataconis

September 12, 2015

Comments

Notwithstanding two and a half months of a campaign in which he made disparaging comments about Hispanic immigrants, insinuated that Mexican immigrants are rapists and that the Mexican government is conspiring to send criminals to the United States, and released an immigrant plan that can only be described as anti-immigrant, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he would win Latino voters in a General Electors. The fact that Mitt Romney only received 27% of the Latino vote in 2012, and that no Republican Presidential candidate has ever received a majority of that vote since pollsters started measuring it, made his claims seem especially unbelievable. Now, a new poll shows that, if the election were held to today, Trump would do even worse among Latino voters than Romney did:

Donald Trump may say he loves Latino voters, but Latino voters are not loving him back, according to a new poll.

Any Democratic presidential candidate would resoundingly carry the Latino vote over the current Republican front-runner if the 2016 election were held today, according to the latest MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist poll released Friday.

In a hypothetical general election match-up, leading Democrat Hillary Clinton would trounce Trump 69%-22% among Latino voters. Against Vice President Joe Biden, who has not yet said whether he plans to run, Trump would still perform poorly – 71% to Biden’s 20%.

The latest poll results are exactly the scenario that Republican elites had hoped to avoid in the 2016 election. Trump is ranking even worse than Mitt Romney’s disastrous showing among Latinos seen in the 2012 election, when he earned just 27% of their support. The Republican National Committee very publicly stated in its autopsy report following the election that it was imperative for the party to win over Latinos in order to remain competitive in the next presidential race.

It is worth noting as a caveat that, because of the size of the sample of Latino voters that was used for this poll the margin of error is slightly higher than it typically would be for a political poll of this type. Instead of a margin between 3 and 4 percent, the margin of error for this portion of the poll is over 6 percent. What this means is that, theoretically, Trump could be doing about as well among Latinos as Romney did in 2012, or he could be doing far, far worse than even the 22% that we see in this poll result. Whichever number it is, it is certainly nowhere near Trump’s ridiculous claim that he would be able to win the Latino vote in a General Election, and it’s not surprising to figure out why. For the past two months Donald Trump has run a campaign that has appealed to some of the worse aspects of the hard right base of the Republican Party. In doing so, he and has supporters have engaged in one reckless attack against Hispanic immigrants after another. Trump’s rhetoric about Mexicans plays into every prejudice that the people he is appealing to have about immigrants in general and Hispanics in particular. It isn’t a new tactic in American politics. Anti-Immigrant politicians in the 19th Century used it, and George Wallace and people like him used the same arguments to fight back against desegregation during the Civil Rights Era. With rhetoric like that, it’s not at all surprising that Latino voters really, really don’t like Donald Trump.

The important question, of course, isn’t just how Latino voters feel about Donald Trump, but whether what Trump is doing, the rhetoric he is using, and the direction he and his supporters are trying to pull the Republican Party will end up damaging the GOP no matter who the nominee is in 2016. This poll does not appear to have tested Latino support for other Republican candidates in head-to-head matchups, so it’s hard to say what impact Trump is having on the image of the GOP overall with that group. A poll taken in August showed that while these voters had a negative view of Donald Trump, those negative opinions don’t seem to have translated over to the GOP as a whole just yet. Since that time, though, we’ve seen several Republican candidates adopt Trump’s position on issues like ending birthright citizenship. Given that Trump is the frontrunner, it isn’t surprising that his opponents would seek to co-opt him on the issues, but the more they do that the more they risk alienating Latino voters just like Trump has done. If that happens, Trumpism is still likely to do real damage to the Republican Party, even if Donald Trump isn’t the nominee.

19 responses to “Donald Trump Gets Less Support From Latino Voters Than Mitt Romney Did”

rachel

September 12, 2015 at 1:52 pm

Another one of Trump’s statements turns out to straight out of Cloud Cuckoo Land? Say it ain’t so!
stonetools

September 12, 2015 at 1:54 pm

Trump’s (and the Republican Party’s position seems to be “We can gain more white bigoted voters in the short run than any Latino voters we might piss off.” That seemed to work in the 2014 Senate elections, but most likely will backfire in the 2016 nationwide Presidential elections.
Wonder what the result will be if say, 90 per cent of Latinos and Asians vote Democratic? It will be a Presidential landslide, for sure, but will it also mean a Senate landslide?
Grewgills

September 12, 2015 at 2:02 pm

If he keeps up his current turn and escalates his rhetoric against Clinton he might do just as well among women. Viva el Trumpo!
Ron Beasley

September 12, 2015 at 2:04 pm

The Hispanics tend to be religious Conservatives and Trump is not one. The only true religious conservatives are Mike Hickaabbe (spelling error intentional) and Rick Santorum,
OzarkHillbilly

September 12, 2015 at 4:31 pm

@Ron Beasley:

The Hispanics tend to be religious Conservatives

Feel the need to note Ron that I have never met an Hispanic that meets the American definition of “religious conservative”. Their all too busy working and trying to provide for their families to give much attention to the abortion or gay marriage debates. By and large they are agains,,,, Oooopps, gotta go to work.
Adescato

September 12, 2015 at 5:36 pm

MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist poll – hahahahahahaha
An Interested Party

September 12, 2015 at 5:53 pm

The Hispanics tend to be religious Conservatives…

As are many African-Americans…which highlights strongly how toxic the GOP is to ethnic minorities in this country…I mean, if the party can’t get the support of these people, many of whom could form a natural part of their base, what does that say about the party…….
al-Ameda

September 12, 2015 at 6:24 pm

Trump, the who-gives-a-damn narcissist that he is, is of course pandering to fearful angry voters – a time-honored proven tactic, it’s guaranteed to attract people who have two basic needs: (1) to blame someone or some people for a perceived problem, and (2) avoid having to think for themselves when a charlatan is telling you that there’s a simple solution to a complex problem.

THAT SAID, It is noteworthy to me that the current Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, now faced with a refugee-migrant problem of his own, is copping the same attitude and language that Donald Trump and many other Republicans are very comfortable with.

Here’s an excerpt from an editorial opinion piece in the Budapest Times re: PM Orban’s attitude regarding the wave of Syrian refugees surging itoward Austria, Hungary and Germany from Turkey and the Balkans:

Prime Minister Orbán’s first formal move in this area was to launch his so-called National Consultation initiative in June 2015. The first round included the mailing out to the entire Hungarian population of a staunchly anti-immigrant letter by Orbán in which he pejoratively calls refugees “economic migrants” along with a questionnaire of twelve manipulative questions. Incidentally, only ten percent of the recipients bothered to respond.

Shortly after this colossal waste of public resources came a print advertising campaign. The large blue-and-white billboards placed throughout the country contained such grandiose proclamations as follows: “If you come to Hungary, you must respect our laws!”, “If you come to Hungary, you cannot take away the jobs of Hungarians!” and “If you come to Hungary, you have to respect our culture!” Since the messages on these billboards were all in Hungarian, it is clear that this whole campaign was intended for domestic consumption.

With a few find-and-replace insertions you have 75% of the Republican Party Platform on immigration.
DrDaveT

September 12, 2015 at 7:38 pm

The situation in Europe is really doing a lot to illuminate American attitudes towards immigrants. It’s fascinating to see how much of the fear is not really about jobs or crime, but about culture.

Of course, the “American culture” that we’re so keen to protect from corruption is, itself, a result of the melting pot. In many ways, it’s like language — the current (standard American) English dialect is the bastard offspring of a million historical accidents and continual drift, but we defend its ‘purity’ with our dying breaths. In the same way, we imagine that if American culture gets modified by an influx of immigrants, it will somehow be poorer for that.

In extreme cases, the same people who are berating the South for clinging to their Confederate mythology are at the same time clinging to their Puritan (or Irish-American, or German-American, or Frontiersman, or…) mythology in the face of potential ‘corruption’ from new arrivals.
Andre Kenji

September 12, 2015 at 9:44 pm

Trump was widely mocked by Hispanic media and celebrities, from both sides of the Rio Grande. I don´t think that´s anything related to religion – he simply spends all his time attacking Hispanics…
An Interested Party

September 12, 2015 at 10:12 pm

In the same way, we imagine that if American culture gets modified by an influx of immigrants, it will somehow be poorer for that.

Humph, speak for yourself…
DrDaveT

September 12, 2015 at 10:58 pm

@An Interested Party:

Humph, speak for yourself…

I was “speaking for” (or at least attempting to analyze) “American attitudes”, which currently feature widespread anti-immigrant sentiment. I used “we” in the sense of the exasperated family ‘we’, as in “I’m stuck with these people but I don’t agree with them and wish they’d stop it”. Perhaps I should have said ‘they’ — it didn’t occur to me that people would think I was stating a universal. Sorry about that.
ernieyeball

September 13, 2015 at 1:01 am

Citizen Chump
Kylopod

September 13, 2015 at 9:52 am

@DrDaveT:

Of course, the “American culture” that we’re so keen to protect from corruption is, itself, a result of the melting pot. In many ways, it’s like language — the current (standard American) English dialect is the bastard offspring of a million historical accidents and continual drift, but we defend its ‘purity’ with our dying breaths. In the same way, we imagine that if American culture gets modified by an influx of immigrants, it will somehow be poorer for that.

Excellent points. I’d add to your analogy that for the right, “love of country” and “love of language” are defined almost exclusively in negative terms.

I think English is in fact a wonderful language. Actually, every language is wonderful in its own way. That may sound like hopeless sentimentalism, but it really isn’t, if you’re someone who truly appreciates language. And definitely one of English’s strengths is its richness of vocabulary, having borrowed from an unusually wide variety of languages. We’ve got everything: Latin, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Hindi, Japanese, you name it.

But people who complain about English being threatened by Spanish don’t show much evidence of appreciating English for any of its qualities. Indeed, I suspect they’ve absorbed the same centuries-old cultural prejudices that most of us have, where English is seen as a vulgar, untidy commoner’s tongue in sharp contrast to beautiful, logical, classical languages like Latin or Italian. To the extent that they think about English at all, they view it the way a fish views water, except they think the water’s being polluted.

That’s what the conservative version of “patriotism” is like, for the most part. They talk about America’s greatness without ever explaining why, in concrete terms, America is great. Indeed, they spend at least as much time bashing the US government for its perceived shortcomings as liberals do–they just have a different take on what its strengths and weaknesses actually are. Whenever they bring up “America’s greatness,” it is almost always mentioned as a contrast–either with those who supposedly don’t recognize its greatness, or with those who somehow threaten it.

It’s a tendency that goes back a long way. I think of the episode of All on the Family where Archie breaks out into “God Bless America,” and it isn’t because he’s overcome with emotion at a Fourth of July parade or something, it’s in reaction to hearing Mike defend antiwar protesters.

Right-wing patriotism, like defenses of English purity, is infused with anger, suspicion, and hostility toward perceived outsiders, rather than any real love or affection for the things they’re supposedly defending.
Mikey

September 13, 2015 at 6:25 pm

@rachel:

Another one of Trump’s statements turns out to straight out of Cloud Cuckoo Land?

PolitiFact has a page for Trump. They have looked at 43 of his statements. Of those, none have been rated True, only two Mostly True, and eight Half True.

The remaining 33 have been rated Mostly False (4), False (21), and Pants on Fire (8).

So basically about 75% of the time, he’s lying out his ass, and the other 25% of the time it’s about a 50-50 shot whether or not he’s lying out his ass.

Obviously a lot of Republicans are more interested in form than substance.
Grumpy Realist

September 13, 2015 at 7:56 pm

@Kylopod: you’d consider a five-declension language to be LOGICAL ?!!

And let’s not get into the switchover between the present subjunctive and the imperfect between different groups of verbs. Or the paraphrastic construction. Or deponent verbs….or the locative (?!!)

Neatly organized, perhaps. But certainly not logical.
Mikey

September 13, 2015 at 9:46 pm

@Grumpy Realist: English ain’t so bad. Here are the ways to say “the” in German:

Der, die, das, den, dem, deren, denen, dessen.

Fortunately it gets simpler when things are plural because then everything is feminine.

The window: das Fenster. The windows: die Fenster.

See how easy it is? Meine Hosen sind voll von Kartoffelbrei!

(The two Negronis I just drank may or may not have contributed to the tone of this comment.)
DrDaveT

September 13, 2015 at 11:52 pm

@Mikey:

Meine Hosen sind voll von Kartoffelbrei!

And my hovercraft is full of eels…
Ken in NJ

September 14, 2015 at 11:02 am

@Kylopod:

Indeed, they spend at least as much time bashing the US government for its perceived shortcomings as liberals do–they just have a different take on what its strengths and weaknesses actually are.

David Cross commented on that