If Latinos in Texas voted the way they do in California, there is a decent chance
Obama would have won Texas in 2008.
The Census Bureau estimated, based on the number of Spanish surnames on the voter rolls, that 38 percent of the Latino U.S. citizens over age 18 in Texas went to the polls in November 2008. That was a slight uptick from 2004, when 29 percent of eligible Latinos voted. But other states experienced huge surges in Latino voting last year. California saw about 57 percent of eligible Latinos vote in 2008,
Remember, this is just looking at eligible voters, not the total population.
McCain won by 10 points. Whites decreased as a proportion of the electorate by 3 points in 2008.
2004:
White (66%)
Bush 74%
Kerry 25%
2008:
White (63%)
Obama 26%
MCcain 73%
Considering McCain got the same percentage as favorite son Bush, I am not sure how much worse it can get (at least at the federal level)
http://www.cnn.com/...
Here is the important part:
Latino Men (10%)
Obama 55%
McCain 43%
Latino Women (10%)
Obama 71%
McCain 28%
I am not sure why Latino men were so relatively R friendly compared to women.
But look at 2004:
Latino (20%)
Bush 49%
Kerry 50%
Basically tied. There is no gender breakdown for 2004, but the non-white category shows the same numbers for male and female, at 62-38.
Also non-white women outnumber non-white men 18% of total electorate to 16%. There is a gender gap in African Americans of about 2-3%, so it looks like Latino men and women turned out at the same rate in 2004 as well.
It could be a function of skewed demographics. I have been trying to find a population breakdown, but have not had much success.
There are a variety of reasons for differences between Texas and say, California or Nevada. The most likely reason is labor organizing. SEIU is heavily involved in Southern California especially, and Unite-HERE is very active in Las Vegas.
Texas, however, is a "right-to-work" state (they're really good at coming up with catchy names).
In California, Prop 187 has been called the Make Hispanics Democrats Act of 1994. From a purely electoral perspective, pushing for immigration reform, even if it doesn't pass, can reap benefits.
Many political analysts compare the current tumult over the Arizona law to the uproar over Proposition 187 in California, which passed with GOP backing in 1994 and sought to bar illegal immigrants from receiving public services (it was later declared unconstitutional). In the four years after the measure’s passage, California Hispanics registered to vote in droves and chose the Democratic Party over the Republican Party by a ratio of 8–1, says Harry Pachon of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute. That helped turn California, the largest state in the country, where Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon hailed from, into a reliable Democratic bulwark. Analysts also draw parallels between the Arizona law and the "Sensenbrenner bill"—named for its Republican sponsor, U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner—that passed the House in 2005 and could have led to massive deportations of illegal immigrants (it never became law). That proposal triggered huge demonstrations in 2006 and helped Democrats win sizable Latino margins in the midterms later that year.
And considering there are a fair number of white evangelicals who claim to favor immigration reform, who knows it is theoretically possible that Dems could make gains - I wouldn't hold my breath though.