|
 |
|
Esta página no está disponible en español. BLOOMBERG Hispanic Vote In U.S. May Decide Whether Kerry Overtakes Bush By MICHAEL FORSYTHE September 7, 2004 Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Andres Ramirez, a 26-year-old Las Vegas native, runs a group backed by Democrats that registered 21,000 new Hispanic voters in Nevada, about equal to President George W. Bush's margin of victory in the state in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. ``There is a much higher participation rate among Hispanics this year,'' said Ramirez, who worked for Senate Minority Whip Harry Reid while a student at Georgetown University in Washington. ``They are worried about losing their jobs next week, or they are worried about losing their health care.'' Hispanics are the biggest and fastest-growing ethnic minority group in the U.S., surging by 3.1 million adults from 2000 to 2003, four times the 744,000 increase in non-Hispanic whites, the Census Bureau said. Sixty-two percent of Hispanics voted for Democrat Al Gore in 2000, and polls show them backing the party's nominee, Senator John Kerry, at the same level this year. Kerry and Bush are spending more money than ever on advertisements in Spanish-language radio, television and in newspapers, with the Democrat targeting Hispanic voters as part of a $45 million advertising buy announced last week and Bush, who speaks some Spanish, running commercials in 18 states. Democrats are focusing on raising the minimum wage, expanding health-insurance coverage and increasing public school funding to boost Hispanic voter turnout. That may make the difference in states such as Florida, Arizona and Nevada, among the 18 states Bush won or lost four years ago by less than 7 percentage points. 40% Dropout Rate ``How can we accept the fact that in some cities in America, 40 percent of Hispanic kids are dropping out of school?'' Kerry told a group of minority journalists in Washington last month. Republicans say they also need Hispanic and black voters. In 2001, Matthew Dowd, now the Bush campaign's chief strategist and then a strategist for the Republican National Committee, estimated that because minority ethnic groups are growing so fast Bush would lose the election by 3 million votes if he captured the same share of support among those groups this year ``The Republicans have some problems,'' said Curtis Gans, director of the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate in Washington. ``Barring some change in the nature of the Republican Party's advocacy, the long term is favorable to the Democrats,'' said Gans, who estimates as many as 20 million more people may vote this year than in 2000. 11-Point Lead Bush gained against Kerry in three polls released since Friday. The president led 52 percent to 45 percent for Kerry in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. The Sept. 3-5 survey of 778 likely voters had a 3.5 percentage point margin of error, CNN said. A Newsweek magazine survey found Bush backed by 54 percent of 1,008 registered voters contacted Sept. 2-3. Kerry was supported by 43 percent. The poll had a margin of error of 4 percentage points. Bush led 52 percent to 41 percent for Kerry in a Time magazine poll of 926 likely voters conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 2. At the Republican convention, Bush reached out to middle- class voters in his speech, pledging more money for job retraining and vowing to curb health-care costs by reining in frivolous lawsuits. The two candidates are tied in polls in Arizona, Nevada and Florida. Nationwide, 60 percent of Hispanics, or Latinos, back Kerry and 30 percent support Bush, according to a poll of Latinos by the Washington Post, Univision Communications Inc. and the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California taken July 6-16. 527 Groups The Democratic get-out-the-vote effort is being spearheaded by so-called 527 political groups, named for the section of the tax code under which they operate. The groups are better known to the public after a Republican-backed 527, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, began airing television commercials last month questioning Kerry's Vietnam War record. The groups aren't legally allowed to coordinate activities with the party. Ramirez's group, Voices for Working Families, is part of an umbrella association of 33 such groups registering voters and running advertisements in states such as Ohio, Arizona, Florida and Nevada that both parties see as key to the 2004 election. The groups, collectively called America Votes, have raised at least $98 million, including $33.3 million from three donors: billionaire financier George Soros, movie producer Steve Bing, head of Los Angeles-based Shangri-la Entertainment, and Peter Lewis, chairman of Mayfield, Ohio-based Progressive Corp., the third-largest U.S. auto insurer. The groups aren't subject to federal laws limiting political committee donations to $5,000 per person. The biggest group, America Coming Together, has 1,400 canvassers in 55 field offices in 17 battleground states. It aims to knock on 21 million doors and make 36 million phone calls, keeping track of people's responses through Palm Pilots issued to each canvasser, spokeswoman Sarah Leonard said. The independent groups ``are having a very big impact,'' said Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The Democratic party itself has a staff of 35,000 canvassers in 21 states, including Nevada, Arizona and Florida. They've organized months earlier than in 2000, McAuliffe said in an interview at the Republican National Convention. Bush Files Suit Bush's campaign asked a federal court last week to force the Federal Election Commission to reclassify 527s involved in the presidential elections, limiting their donors to $5,000 contributions amid the Swift Boat controversy. Ramirez's group has fanned out across seven states signing up Hispanics, single women and black voters. In southern Nevada's Clark County, the only county in the state to back Gore in 2000, the group brings voting machines to the 270 precincts it has canvassed to teach potential voters how to use them. They've translated the Voting Rights Act into Spanish and give voters rides to polls, which opened weeks ago in early voting for today's primary election, Ramirez said. ``You'll probably see close to 80 percent voter turnout among Hispanics,'' said Ramirez, who organized voters in Colorado in 2000, said. In 2000, 51.7 percent of Nevada's eligible Hispanic voters cast ballots, according to the Rivera Institute. Loyal Democrats Hispanic voter participation was 45.1 percent in the 2000 presidential election, compared to 56.8 of all adults who were citizens. About 6.7 million Hispanics will vote this year, according to the institute. Hispanics have been loyal to the Democrats in the past two decades. About 65 percent of them voted for Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis when he ran for president in 1988 and 70 percent backed President Bill Clinton's re-election in 1996, according to exit polls analyzed by the institute. 'El voto Latino' "El voto Latino decidira esta elecciones,'' said New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson at the Democratic convention in Boston in July. That translates as ``The Latino vote will decide this election.'' Richardson is on the board of directors of Voices for Working Families. In New Mexico, where Gore won by 366 votes, or 0.06 percent, out of 600,000 ballots cast, Bush is supported by 45 percent of voters, compared with 42 percent for Kerry, the Albuquerque Journal reported. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points. The survey of 908 registered voters, conducted between Aug. 27 and Sept. 1 by Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Research and Polling Inc., found that 8 percent of those questioned were undecided. Kerry had a 7 percentage-point lead over Bush in a poll taken Aug. 17-19 by Manchester, New Hampshire-based American Research Group Inc. About 42 percent of New Mexico's people are Hispanic, the highest percentage of any of the 50 states. Growth Surge The nation's Hispanic population is set to grow by 12 million, or 34 percent, from 2000 to 2010, far outstripping the 7.2 percent growth of the white population, according to the Census Bureau. During that time, the Asian population is projected to rise by 33.3 percent and that of African-Americans by 12.9 percent. In Arizona, which has voted for the Republican candidate in nine of the last 10 presidential elections, the Hispanic population increased by 254,009 from 2000 to 2003. Bush won the state by 96,311 votes in 2000. Voices for Working Families started operations in Arizona on Aug. 2 and has knocked on 7,000 doors, Washington-based spokeswoman Kate Snyder said. Nevada added 97,414 Hispanics from 2000 to 2003 for a total of 486,991. In the 2000 election, about 40 percent of eligible Hispanics there voted. This year, Ramirez's goal is to register 35,000 new voters by October and to contact each one seven times before the Nov. 2 election. Florida is Voices for Working Families' biggest project. There the group has visited more than 325,000 homes and talked to more than 125,000 voters, Snyder said. In 2000, Bush won the state by 537 votes out of almost 6 million cast. About 678,000 Hispanic voters cast ballots in Florida that year, about half the 1.2 million eligible. Cuba Policy Kerry may be helped in Florida by a new Bush administration policy that curtails visits to relatives in Cuba to once every three years and limits remittances to family members in Cuba to $100 per month. South Florida's Cuban-Americans, 82 percent of whom voted for Bush in 2000, are the biggest Hispanic group, and a poll shows their support for Bush slipping after the rules were put in place. The poll taken June 29-July 7 by the nonpartisan San Antonio- based William C. Velasquez Institute found Bush with 66 percent support among Cuban-Americans in Florida. The survey of 812 Cuban- American voters in four Florida counties had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. Kerry may win the state if he ``could just hold on to what Gore did and the Bush campaign pays a price for these new policies'' on remittances and travel, said Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science at the University of California at Irvine. 'Incredible Turnout' One of the supporters of the new rules thinks they'll have the opposite effect in the Cuban-American community. Bush may also be helped by the fact that Mel Martinez, a Cuban-American and Bush's former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, won Florida's Republican primary last week and will take on Democrat Betty Castor to replace outgoing U.S. Senator Bob Graham. ``You are going to see an incredible turnout in incredible numbers for President Bush,'' said Representative Mario Diaz- Balart, 42, a Florida Republican who represents Miami-Dade county, in an interview at the Republican convention last week. ``President Bush has taken steps to hasten the day of a free Cuba.'' Republicans are also working to boost the share of Hispanics who support Bush. In Nevada, the party is sending poll workers to citizenship ceremonies run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to catch new citizens after they take their oath of allegiance, said Brian Scroggins, chairman of the Clark County Republican Party. "We reach into the community,'' Scroggins, 41, said in New York, where he was attending the Republican convention. ``We go to a lot of the Hispanic events.'' California Republicans know about the power of this demographic trend because it turned against them in the most-populous state in the U.S.: California. Republicans could once count on California to help win presidential elections. The state voted Republican in every election from 1968 to 1988, helping Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan enter the White House. In 1999, California's minorities, led by Hispanics, became the majority. Opposition to a state ballot initiative in the 1990s under Republican Governor Pete Wilson, which denied public services to illegal immigrants, galvanized the community, said Desipio. Most of the new rules were overturned by the courts. Hispanics now make up 33 percent of the state's 33.9 million people. The state hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 16 years. Kerry is ahead of Bush by 16 percentage points in the state, according to an Aug. 4-16 poll by the Public Policy Institute of California. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, spoke at the Republican convention last week. He supports Democrats on issues such as abortion rights and gun control. ``Democrats can count on a million-vote advantage from Latinos'' in California, DeSipio said. ``The Republicans just don't have local community leaders on the ground to act as models and examples to bring newly recruited Latinos into the electoral fold.''
|