Reporters seem obsessed with Hillary Clinton's unfavorables and they think they've found her weakness among Latinos too: Her 70 to 19 percent advantage over Trump is weak. Why? Because Trump, of course. How come she isn't polling higher?
Nate Cohn's Wednesday piece at The Upshot declared: "Hispanic Support Appears Flat."
Nonsense, Latino Decisions' Sylvia Manzano told me. "She is crushing him." Hillary's also outperforming Obama in the head-to-head race at this stage of the game in 2012, based on the latest Latino Decisions national poll of 3,729 registered Latino voters conducted in late August.
It's true that only 51 percent of Latino voters said they feel "more enthusiastic" about voting in 2016 than they did in 2012. But 76 percent said it's "more important" for them to vote in 2016 than it was four years ago. That 20-point enthusiastic vs. important gap plays out in every one of the seven swing states the outfit polled: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia.
"Enthusiasm implies something positive," Manzano explains. "But saying it's 'more important' really taps into that feeling that a lot of Latino voters have—when people are chanting 'Build a wall!' and Trump is red in the face, yelling, 'Believe me, we're going to build it, day one!' What we hear is at a visceral level very uncomfortable." Latino Decisions pollsters didn't think "enthusiasm" was the right word to capture that sentiment, so they decided to add a follow question about how important it is to vote.
Additionally, compared to four years ago in late August (when the poll was taken), the 51 percent who feel “more enthusiastic” marks a 14-point uptick from 37 percent who said the same in 2012. In fact, enthusiasm peaked at 47 percent in 2012, the week before Election Day.
Some reporters have also homed in on the notion that President Obama has a higher favorable rating than Hillary Clinton, 75 to 68 percent in the LD poll.
"If her national favorability rating was at 68 percent, this race would be over," Manzano points out. "I can tell you, across groups, she is liked by Latinos. She won 2/3 of Latinos in the primaries in 2008. They haven't left her."
When Obama was a candidate in 2012, he had a 74 percent favorable rating in the final week of August and a 71 percent favorable rating throughout most of September. But he had also just announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in June, which 49 percent of Latino voters said made them more enthusiastic about Obama, yielding a net enthusiasm advantage of +35 points. He also hadn't fought a primary challenge in 2012, as opposed to Clinton, who just came out of a competitive race with Bernie Sanders. Obama ultimately won 71 percent of the Latino vote, according to Pew Research Center.
