Karl Rove's plans for a Permanent Republican Majority were based in part on this realization: if the Republican Party wants to regularly win national elections in the future, it must appeal to Latino voters. McCain only attracted around 30%, but maybe things have improved since then:
Click to enlarge.
This shows the percent of Latino respondents in the Daily Kos poll who have a favorable view of the Republican party. Prior to Sotomayor's nomination, that was around 12% - lousy by any measure. Somehow, since Sotomayor's nomination, Republicans have managed to lose half of what little support they had - they're now down to 7%.
And guess what? Latino voters aren't the only ones paying attention. More below.
Clearly, when the strategy of the Republican party is to call Sotomayor a racist, this doesn't endear Republicans to Latino voters. Whaddaya know.
Let's pull back for a bigger perspective, for both parties, for all racial categories. Democrats on the left, Republicans on the right:
Click to enlarge.
A few obvious points:
- Dems have better favorables in all categories at all times
- Dems favorables are more or less steady; Republicans are in decline
- Republican favorables among Blacks are nearly nonexistent
- Republican favorables in January are right about at the percent support McCain had in November
Let's take a look at a slightly different measure, net favorability (favorable - unfavorable):
Click to enlarge.
Note these two graphs do not share the same range on the y-axis. Aside from declines in March, favorability of Democrats is pretty steady, and rather dull.
Republicans, on the other hand, show some interesting decreases.
- We can see how the election of Michael Steele as chairman of the RNC was followed by a fall in net approval among African Americans. However, net approval was falling among all groups at this time, and the only reason it stopped falling among African Americans was it essentially had nowhere left to go.
- We also see the drop among Latino voters after the nomination of Sotomayor is mirrored by a drop among those in the category Other/Refused; in other words, the Republicans' shoddy treatment of Sotomayor was not appreciated by other minorities either.
- Finally, we see an increase in net favorability among whites in recent weeks. Was this a delayed reaction among the base to Republican bloviation over Sotomayor? Was it a reaction to Republican sex scandals - nothing better than a redeemed sinner? Something else?
Another way to look at the data is what fraction of support has been lost:
Click to enlarge.
Democrats have lost the favor of about 10% in each group except Black. Republicans, on the other hand, have lost 30-70% of what little favor they started with in January. It is easy to see in this graph how the path for white diverged from other and Latino over the past month.
Those who no longer have a favorable opinion of Republicans may still vote for Republicans, of course. But generally speaking, it seems better for a party for favorability ratings not to be taking a nosedive.
Cross posted on Open Left.