Poll: Immigration Hatin’ Hurts GOP Chances

Flickr/ <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/notionscapital/4564044575/">Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com</a> (Creative Commons)

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Right-wing conservatives retrogressives in the American West have been so preoccupied with illegal brown people, that they forgot to worry about the legal ones. So says a new analysis by Public Policy Polling, anyway: Since the passage of Arizona’s draconian “Papers, Please” law, likely voters in Arizona and Colorado have shifted their support to the Democratic candidates in a “very substantive way,” bucking the alleged national mood of Obama-hatin’. That shift is largely due to energized (and probably angry) Latino voters. According to Tom Jensen, PPP’s director:

When we polled Colorado in early March Michael Bennet and Jane Norton were tied. Last week we found Bennet with a 3 point lead. One of the biggest reasons for that shift? Bennet went from leading Norton by 12 points with Hispanic voters to a 21 point advantage. That large shift in a Democratic direction among Hispanics mirrors what we saw in our Arizona Senate polling last month– Rodney Glassman went from trailing John McCain by 17 points with them in September to now holding a 17 point lead.

Hispanics in the Mountain West are leaning much more strongly toward the Democrats since the Arizona law was passed. The big question then becomes whether there are white voters who are going to go Republican this fall who wouldn’t have if that bill hadn’t been passed. We don’t see any evidence of that happening yet- Bennet and Glassman are both doing better with white voters than they were before as well, although not to the same degree that they’ve improved with Hispanics.

I called up Jensen to shed some more light on these developments. He said that yes, indeed, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is leading in Colorado, and in Arizona, challenger Rodney Glassman (who’s still a longshot), who once trailed John McCain by 30 points, has cut that margin in half. (McCain’s popularity, the poll says, has “plummeted” in Arizona.) Has Jensen ever seen anything like this? At this stage in an election cycle, he says, “Most movement in races don’t have that much to do with the candidates, they have to do with a change in the national political climate.” What’s weird, though, is that “there hasn’t been a movement in that political climate towards Democrats. They’re not doing better; they’ve largely stayed where they are.”

The takeaway, according to Jensen: At least in these races—and perhaps later on in Nevada and New Mexico—”If the immigration bill is having any effect, it’s to shift Latino voters in large numbers to the Democratic candidates”—but there’s no concurrent migration of more white voters to other side.

In short, nativists and neo-Know-Nothing candidates may succeed in squeezing past fellow conservatives retrogressives in primary races, but come November, they may taste the pain, courtesy of the minority voters threatened by their policies. That is, of course, unless the right succeeds in rounding up or scaring off all those voters before election day.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate