In the article titled “Texas Sees a Surge in Latino Voters”
by R.G. Ratcliffe in the Burka Blog, the author makes the claim that eligible voters
with Hispanic last names could be the potentially factor that determines whether Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton wins Texas or not. He concludes this because “there are 532,000 more registered Hispanic surname voters this
year than in 2012”. While this is a good assumption, Hispanic surnames are not clear
indicatives of guaranteed Democratic votes. While Hispanic voters do tend to
side the Democratic Party in issues such as immigration, a considerable number have a more traditional view on issues such as abortion, marriage equality, and gun
control. He acknowledges this point when he provides the fact that "in 1998
Governor George W. Bush received somewhere between 40 percent and half the
Hispanic vote". A second reason that might explain why the
Hispanic vote is not solely blue is that party identification is a concept that
is fairly new or completely new for second and first-generation Hispanics. Because
party identification is not a badge worn since infancy for the majority of
Hispanics in Texas, the loyalty to either party that most Americans display is
merely non-existent.
He uses very good evidence for his claims about Hillary Clinton’s
advantage over Trump’s slow decreasing support here in Texas. He cites an
article from UT Austin’s College of Liberal Arts which finds that “the three
most recent polls used methodologies, including modes, that were completely
dissimilar, yet, as the results below suggest, yielded strikingly similar
margins”. The three similar results support the credibility of this data.
Ratcliffe’s audience is mostly Texans who identify as democrats,
or in the least, lean democrat because Texas Monthly’s is a progressive and
mainly liberal magazine.
Overall, I agree with Ratcliffe’s last words when he states that “if
[Hillary Clinton wins], Republicans can blame Trump, and Democrats can praise
the strength of a new Hispanic voting bloc”, because I don’t believe that the
surge of the eligible Hispanic vote is as powerful as Trump’s damage to his own
political career. Although Texas’ Hispanic population is significant, current Hispanic
political involvement is insignificant when compared to that of older white
Republicans.
No comments:
Post a Comment