Latino Support for Hillary in 2016 Depends on Her Stance on Executive Action on Immigration

*Interesting. Yesterday USA Today ran a story about Latino fundraisers and their support for Hillary. This poll seems to support the idea that Latinos are waiting to hear from Hillary on immigration and Obama’s executive action before making up their minds. And even though survey after survey finds that Latino voters are less interested in immigration than they are in other domestic issues, immigration recurs as the hinge topic for Latinos in 2016. VL

Latino DecisionsBy Matt Barreto, Latino Decisions

New Poll Shows 2016 Latino Votes Will Follow Candidates who Want to Continue and Extend President Obama’s Executive Action on Immigration

During the November 2014 midterms Latino voters said the number one issue they wanted Congress and the President to address was immigration reform.  Today, new nationalpoll findings of Latino voters reveal that the 2016 presidential election will also hinge on immigration. The 2016 Latino vote could face huge swings, depending on whether candidates will renew or let expire President Obama’s executive action on deportation relief. Specifically– the poll shows a nearly 50% swing in Latino voter support for Hillary Clinton, depending on whether or not she pledges to continue the executive action started under President Obama.Clinton said she supported President Obama’s executive action on immigration, but has not said if she believes the next president should renew it, or let it expire. Obama’s executive action is temporary and the next President could renew or eliminate the it in 2017, unless Congress passes permanent reform.

See full poll results here: http://bit.ly/latinovote2016poll

The national poll of Latino registered voters was conducted November 20-22, following with the news of President Obama’s policy announcement, and was conducted by Latino Decisions and commissioned by Presente.org in partnership with NALACC and Mi Familia Vota.  On November 24, Latino Decisions released the first poll of Latino opinions on the executive action and found an overwhelming 89% of Latino voters supported President Obama’s actions on immigration.

Poll headlines

 

Fig 1 2016 Exec Action

  • In addition, Latino voters demonstrated strong support for even further presidential action on immigration if Congress fails to pass permanent reforms.  When asked if the President should use additional executive actions to protect additional undocumented immigrants who do not have U.S. citizen children and were not offered relief under the November 20th announcement, fully 73% of Latinos said yes.

Fig 2 2016 Exec Action

Forecasting how the executive action will play out in 2016 is actually pretty easy, given a very similar story unfolded in 2012.  In June 2012 President Obama enacted the DACA executive action to provide relief from deportation and temporary work permits for DREAMers.  His Republican challenger Mitt Romney opposed the DACA program and eventually said he would not renew the program if elected President.  On election day 2012 58% of Latino voters said they were more enthusiastic about Obama because he enacted DACA.  In contrast, 57% said they were less enthusiastic about Romney because of his opposition to the executive order.  Further, 74% of Latinos said they felt the Romney campaign either “didn’t care about Latinos” or was “hostile towards Latinos” according to election eve polling.

Statement by Arturo Carmona, Executive Director of Presente.org:

“Hillary Clinton and other Presidential candidates for 2016 can either support stopping deportations through executive action or they can lose the Latino vote. Should Congress fail to resolve the deportation crisis, 73% of Latinos favor additional executive orders to finish the job for the additional 7 million immigrants that were left out: and they will base their votes on which candidates will finish the job.”

Statement by Oscar Chacon, Executive Director of NALACC:

“This survey makes it abundantly clear that Latino voters will support presidential candidates committed to keeping President Obama’s executive actions on immigration policy in place. This poll also evidences the importance of immigration policy and immigrant rights to Latino voters in the context of the 2016 Presidential election. If Republican or Democratic presidential candidates hope to attract Latino voters to their respective camps in 2016, they will need to come up with just solutions to our broken, obsolete and inhumane immigration policy.”

Statement by Ben Monterroso, Executive Director of Mi Familia Vota:

“The poll results give very clear direction to any presidential candidate in 2016. It does not matter what party you belong to, or even how friendly you have been with the Latino community in past years. It’s not even enough to say that you support the president’s use of executive authority. If you want the Latino vote in 2016 — and you should, if you want to win the White House — you have to commit to continuing the president’s temporary program until Congress passes a long-term solution that is acceptable to Latino voters.”

This article was originally published in Latino Decisions.

Dr. Matt A. Barreto is the co-founder (with Gary Segura) of the polling and research firm Latino Decisions, and Professor of Political Science, and adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Washington.  In 2012 Time Magazine called Latino Decisions the “gold-standard in Latino American polling” and Barreto’s research was recognized in the 30 Latinos who made the 2012 election by Politic365, listed in the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2012 by the European Politics Magazine LDSP, and was named one of the top 15 leading Latino pundits by Huffington Post which said Barreto was “the pollster that has his finger on the pulse of the Latino electorate.”

[Photo by East-West Center/Flickr]

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