Psst Rahm? Immigration is killing Republicans

We've seen the past two years the immigration issue doesn't decide elections, and that even a majority of Republicans aren't frothing in the mouth about it. To wit, Virginia, where Republicans based their entire 2007 off-year state legislative election strategy on demonizing immigrants, the primary exit polls for Republican voters, showed this (page two):

How to handle illegal immigrants

Path to citizenship: 26
Temporary worker: 28
Deport them: 44

That is, the most hard-core Republicans, the ones who bothered to turn out in a year when Republicans are mostly staying home, are more likely to support ways to keep undocumented immigrants in this country than they are to demand deportation.

Not that it's stopped Rahm Emanuel from continuing his efforts to the Democratic caucus to the right on the issue, obsessed with the notion that this is somehow a new "third rail" of American politics. But third rails kill. And if anyone is about to get burned by anti-immigrant sentiment, it's the GOP.

Today NDN is excited to release a new initial study of how the Hispanic vote has performed in the 2008 Presidential Primary elections.

The study has two key findings:

• Of those Hispanics who have voted this year in the Presidential nominating contents, 75%, 3 out of 4, have voted Democratic.
• The Hispanic share of the overall Democratic primary electorate has increased by almost 50 percent since the 2004 Democratic primaries.

These findings are consistent with recent trends in the Hispanic electorate. From 2002 to 2006 the percentage of the electorate that was Hispanic increased 33 percent, from 6 % of the overall electorate in 2002 to 8% in 2006. From 2004 to 2006 the Hispanic electorate went from 59% Democrat and 40% Republican to 70% Democrat 30%. The 3:1 preference for Democrats this year indicates even further erosion of support for Republicans from their very poor showing in 2006.

And that 75-25 percent breakdown includes the numbers in Florida (53R-47D) and Michigan (59R-41D), neither of which held a real Democratic primary, so the Republicans made up a little ground in those states. Had Democrats actually turned out in those states for a real election, the Democratic advantage among Latinos would've been even larger than 75-25 overall.

Even in Arizona, McCain's home state, the breakdown was 68D-32R. In a state that is 29.2% Latino as of 2006, that's the sort of disadvantage that Republicans can ill afford to have. And the more virulently anti-immigrant their rhetoric, the more lopsided those Democratic advantages become.

This is one of those great times that doing the right thing is also the best politics. Rahm's jihad against immigrants isn't based on the numbers. The numbers are clear. If he persists, there can be only one other explanation.