LEXIS-NEXISŽ Academic Universe-Document

LEXIS-NEXISŽ Academic

September 6, 2001

SECTION: National Review Online; Dissent

LENGTH: 1409 words

HEADLINE: The Truth About Bush & Latinos

BYLINE: By Patrick Ruffini

BODY:
Last month, the Center for Immigration Studies released a study on Latino voting patterns entitled "Impossible Dream or Distant Reality? Republican Efforts to Attract Latino Voters." Written by James G. Gimpel and Karen Kauffman, the study concluded that Latinos are reliably Democratic, and will continue to remain so. In fact, Gimpel and Kauffman argue that, since Democratic margins among Latinos will only grow, George W. Bush shouldn't even bother wooing them.

It's hard to argue with the first assumption. Last November, Latinos voted for Al Gore over Bush by a margin of 62 to 35 percent, a 27 point margin. To Gimpel and Kauffman, this is proof positive that all of the Bush campaign's efforts to target Latino voters were for naught: "Nationally, the Bush campaign's effort to woo Hispanic voters was mostly a failure, as the Latino vote showed largely the same pattern of presidential vote choice that it had in previous elections."

But maybe Gimpel and Kauffman should have read the election statistics. Bush actually sliced a 51-point Clinton/Gore margin among Latinos in 1996 nearly in half, to 27 points. This 24-point swing to Bush was triple the 8 percent national swing to Bush (in which he nearly erased Bill Clinton's 8.5 percent victory margin in '96). According to VNS exit polls, the Latino surge toward Bush in 2000 outdid Bush's gains in every other major bloc: ethnic, religious, educational, age, income, or regional. From there, the study's "proof" of a Latino surge to the Democrats begins to unravel. Citing a 1999 Washington Post/Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard survey of Latino voters, Gimpel and Kauffman posit a scenario in which emerging subgroups of Latinos - including previous non-voters, new citizens, and illegal immigrants (who would benefit from any proposed amnesty) - will flood the electorate and vote more Democratic than the Latino citizens of today. The authors concede that the Democrats' partisan advantage narrows as Latinos start earning more: Among those earning over $100,000, the gap is just 9.8 percent. But they tout the survey's unlikely finding that while Latinos become more Republican as they get wealthier, they actually vote more Democratic as they become more educated.

That trend should raise a red flag. Educational achievement is linked to earning capacity, with the highly educated sharing much in common with the most affluent: Normally, these demographics consist of roughly the same people. So why does the poll - which is the basis for the study - show such a wide gulf between the highest earners (where Democrats lead by 10 percent) and the educated (where Democrats lead by 30 or more)?

Of course, the poll could be wrong. But if the Latino educated really are different from the Latino affluent, maybe this is why: According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Surveys (CPS), Latino educational achievement has doubled in the last 30 years, with college graduation rates starting off from a very low base of around five percent in 1971. This rapid increase means that the bulk of the Latino educated are relatively young, and probably not yet in a position to earn salaries of $100,000 or more. This stands in marked contrast to your average Latino high-earner, a fiftysomething small businessman who never went to college, but pulled himself up by the bootstraps to become a success. The latter is most likely to identify with a Republican message of individual responsibility. The former, meanwhile, is likely to be doused in academic liberalism, in a setting where ethnic grievances and victimization are nurtured.

Latinos' low college-graduation rates reverberate throughout the income ladder: Most Latinos are about half as likely to hold a college degree as their white counterparts in the same income bracket. This statistic speaks volumes about the Latino work ethic. Lacking the same educational opportunities as whites, many Latinos were still able to draw even in their standard of living, and they did it mostly on their own.

The lower proportion of Latino achievers who are college-educated confirms my hypothesis that the life experiences of young, educated Latino liberals might be far removed from those of a larger group of conservative-leaning Latinos who climbed the economic ladder through hard work alone. This would mirror the politics of privilege in the general electorate, where the moderately affluent vote Republican, but the young educated veer to the left. (According to my analysis, George W. Bush lost the battle for third to Ralph Nader in the precincts surrounding Yale and the University of Wisconsin; he came pretty close to it at the University of Virginia and Ohio State.)

So which group will ultimately win out? Of course, Gimpel and Kauffman believe that as Latinos grow more prosperous, they will become more like the emerging group of educated liberals, and less like today's already-thriving conservative small-business class. But remember: Radicals tend to blink when they first enter the business world, in that rude awakening known as the first paycheck. Something about surrendering a third of your pay to the government, and getting very little in return, can make you think twice about voting Democrat or Green.

Whether my theory is correct, or the poll is just wrong, eventually, economics probably will trump any ideological indiscretions among young Latinos (this happens when any young electorate matures). Rising Latino incomes are likely to lead ultimately to a narrower, not a wider, partisan divide.

Still, though flawed, Gimpel's and Kauffman's discussion does lay out a serious objection to the notion of a rising GOP tide among Latinos. The rest of the "study," however, contains barely any facts at all.

Gimpel and Kauffman allege, for instance, that the Republican advantage among Cuban Americans has dwindled to just six points. They also assert that the Bush vote among Cubans is well below the highs set by Ronald Reagan. This simply isn't borne out by the data. In the majority Latino precincts of Miami-Dade County (the nucleus of the Cuban population), Bush beat Gore by 74.6 to 24.7 percent, a whopping 26-point swing from four years before. (In the same precincts in 1996, Bob Dole couldn't even crack 60 percent.) The authors seem to interpret Bush's one-point victory among Florida Hispanics as a bad omen for the Cuban vote (haven't they even heard of Elian Gonzales?) - ignoring the fact that, according to CPS data, only 50 percent of Florida's Latino vote is Cuban. Running second is one of the most Democratic groups of all, Puerto Ricans, at 25 percent, and their influx into the Orlando area (and into Orange County) made it one of only two counties in the United States to flip from supporting Dole in '96 to supporting Gore in '00.

Furthermore, Gimpel and Kauffman assume that Latinos march in lockstep with Democrats on economic and social-welfare issues ("Latinos are strongly attracted to the Democratic Party... because the Democrats are in line with Latino policy preferences on education, health care, and social services"). Yet they don't include a shred of evidence to back up this claim. As Michael Barone shows in his pioneering new book, The New Americans, Latinos are mostly skeptical of the welfare state, and are more likely than other groups to rely on work and family networks to get ahead. Latinos also tend to agree with Republicans on social issues - and that counts far more than the study's authors will admit. The fact that the Republican party can't get its liberals and conservatives to stop arguing about abortion and focus on tax cuts, shows that social issues are not easily bottled up in American politics. And what do Gimpel and Kauffman make of the election of right-winger Vicente Fox to the presidency of Mexico? If Mexicans in Mexico can vote for a conservative, isn't there at least some hope that their wealthier American brethren can do the same?

It would be foolish to predict exactly what will happen with the Latino vote in 2004, but the president's nimble courtship of Latinos has been paying handsome dividends thus far: Bush has a 58 percent job-approval rating among Hispanics. If he keeps it up, there's no reason the GOP can't further improve its position. To really understand this challenge, however, we'll need a guide to the Latino vote that's less partisan than the Gimpel-Kauffman study.

LOAD-DATE: December 5, 2001