Latinos Help Score Some Wins for GOP

Latinos Help Score Some Wins for GOP
By Ana Campoy Voters in the Southwest put a dent in the widely held notion that Latinos overwhelmingly favor the Democratic Party, helping to score big wins for several Hispanic Republicans and some unexpected losses for Hispanic Democrats. In Texas, home to the largest number of Hispanics after California, voters elected two Republican Latinos to the House. Republican Bill Flores , a former Oil and gas executive and political newcomer, handily defeated Democratic Rep. Chet Edwards , a 20-year ...

Both Parties Get Help From Hispanics - WSJ.com
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Elex day was a good day for Hispanic Republicans, too
From the Pew Hispanic Center: Tuesday's Midterm Elections were historic for Hispanics. For the first time ever, three Latino Candidates-all of them Republicans-won top statewide offices. New Mexico: nation's first Latina Governor, Republican Susana Martinez Nevada: Republican Brian Sandoval won the Governor's race and became Nevada's first Hispanic governor. Florida: Republican Marco Rubio won the U.S. Senate race. But Democratsh should not d...

Cheer Up, Democrats. Things Will Improve.
Via Ben Smith, this Stu Rothenberg prognostication from April 2009 is bound to live in infamy: Over the past couple of weeks, at least three Republicans — House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.), former Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) and campaign consultant Tony Marsh — have raised the possibility of the GOP winning back the House of Representatives next year. That idea is lunacy and ought to be put to rest immediately. None of the three actually predicted that Republicans would gain ...

Longtime Texas Dems lose
Democrats lost two well-known competitive seats in Texas, and they’re trailing in one late-breaking sleeper race — totals that could amount to a complete wipeout for long-serving Democrats. Reps. Chet Edwards and Ciro Rodriguez both lost, and Rep. Solomon Ortiz is in the fight of his life in the state’s 27th District. Ortiz, who was first elected in 1982, is trailing Republican challenger Blake Farenthold in the heavily Democratic Rio Grande Valley — as of 3 a.m. EDT, w...

ELECTION DIGEST: Texas GOP posed to pick up 3 seats in Congress; Democrat Nunez falls to Republican in education board race.
Final results have confirmed early returns for the Austin Community College District's bid to annex five Central Texas School Districts: Two School Districts joined the ACC taxing zone, and residents of three School Districts rejected the option in Tuesday's Election. In the Elgin School District, 2,494 voters, 61.4 percent of the vote, voted for annexation; 1,567 voters, 38.6 percent, voted against. In the Hays School District, the split was 6,931 voters (58.5 percent) for and 4,924 voters (41....

2 longtime Texas Democrats ousted from Congress
WACO, Texas — Two longtime Texas Democrats were ousted from Congress by Republican newcomers who capitalized on a wave of voter frustration at the Federal Government and The Economy, and a third Democrat was trailing by about 800 votes early Wednesday. Democratic Rep. Chet Edwards of Waco was ousted after 20 years in Congress as Republican Bill Flores, an Oil and gas executive who had never run for public office, defeated him Tuesday with about 62 percent of the vote. Edwards, chairman of ...

Election Digest: Texas GOP poised to pick up 3 seats in Congress
Final results have confirmed early returns for the Austin Community College District's bid to annex five Central Texas School Districts: Two School Districts joined the ACC taxing zone, and residents of three School Districts rejected the option in Tuesday's Election. In the Elgin School District, 2,494 voters, 61.4 percent of the vote, voted for annexation; 1,567 voters, 38.6 percent, voted against. In the Hays School District, the split was 6,931 voters (58.5 percent) for and 4,924 voters (41....

Richardson pledges smooth transition for gov-elect
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Gov. Bill Richardson is naming his Chief of Staff to lead a team that will help Republican Susana Martinez take over as Governor next year. Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said Wednesday the Democratic Governor called Martinez on Tuesday night to offer congratulations on her victory and he is prepared to ensure a smooth transition for the Governor-elect, who takes office Jan. 1 Richardson Chief of Staff Brian Condit will head the administration's transition effort....

Memo to Tea Party Nation: You can't trash Latinos and claim to court them
Today's little missive from Tea Party Nation about Nevada made me laugh out loud, and should amuse you too. I especially liked the part where they blamed Sharron Angle for losing the Latino vote: They did not understand how to attract Hispanic votes . And they had better learn fast if they want to win any future Elections. Hispanics are good people, family is their foundation, there are many Hispanic Small Business owners, and Hispanics should be part of the Conservative Movement. Conservatives ...

How the National Exit Poll Badly Missed the Latino Vote in 2010
Latino Decisions estimates differ significantly from the network Exit Polls and this raises the question of whether we, or they, have a systematic flaw (complete Latino Decisions Election Polls posted here). Examination of the method of selection, clustered interviews, statistical properties of the resulting samples, uneven distribution of minority populations, and the low incidence of bilingual interviewing all suggest that the Exit poll estimates for racial and ethnic sub-populations, reported...

Krikorian: Reid Didnt Get 90% of the Latino Vote
Mark Krikorian writes: The Amnesty crowd is hawking a new fable — that a massive margin among Hispanics saved Harry Reid: Longtime Immigration advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) credited Hispanics Wednesday for keeping Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in the Senate. “Latino citizens responded to Majority Leader Harry Reid’s aggressive pursuit of Immigration Reform by voting for him in overwhelming numbers,” he said in a statement. “They were clearly the differen...

Immigration: Losing Issue For GOP Out West
Talking tough on Immigration may have boosted GOP prospects in predominantly white states and districts, but it looks to have backfired in a big way in the West and the Southwest. A shocking statistic from last night: Despite the massive Republican gains in the House, it looks like the GOP won't net a single seat from the West Coast and Pacific Rim states. And they underperformed dramatically in Hispanic-rich Southwest states, losing an Albuquerque House seat that looked awfully winnable, an Ari...

Bachmann bid for GOP leadership gets cool reaction
WASHINGTON (AP) - Self-proclaimed Tea Party Leader Michele Bachmann's bid for a top Republican post in the House received a cool reaction Thursday from Speaker-to-be John Boehner, an early test of how GOP Leaders will treat the antiestablishment movement's winners in Tuesday's Elections. "Constitutional Conservatives deserve a loud and clear voice in leadership!" Bachmann, R-Minn., who founded the Tea Party Caucus, said in a one-paragraph Facebook announcement that she is running for GOP confer...

Activists call for new speaker
Some 46 conservative Activists and Tea Party Leaders from around the state sent current and incoming members of the Texas House a letter today urging them to replace Republican Speaker Joe Straus. “A change to a more conservative speaker is in order,” the letter says. “The voters who labored hard for this conservative majority expect it to diligently represent their conservative values.” Signers include Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans, Peggy Venable of Americans ...

Four More Lessons from the GOP Landslide
A few more items to add to the list we drew up while the balloons were still falling early Wednesday morning: Christine O’Donnell was even less electable than Alvin Greene. Despite never actually campaigning and displaying even more bizarre behavior than O'Donnell, the South Carolina Democrat outdrew the Delaware Republican by 358,276 to 123,025 -- a margin of 235,000 votes. (For that matter, Greene also earned more votes than Sharron Angle, who collected 320,996 while losing to Harry Rei...

Dems defeat a crushing blow for redistricting
When the Census results come in, State Legislators around the nation will begin the process of re-drawing each State’s Congressional Districts. They must make sure they are equal in population. But where they can, Legislators will also work to give their own Party the advantage. Before Election 2010, Democrats were on pace for a very decent redistricting round. They were going to control the creation of 129 Districts — only 7 fewer than they controlled after the 2000 election. Republ...

Ascendant GOP to target federal health care law
Republican congressional leaders made noise Wednesday about targeting the nation’s new Federal Health Care law after winning control of the U.S. House of Representatives and adding a few more Republicans to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, the Washington Post reports. It’s no secret that the GOP made repealing the law one of the battle cries of the 2010 Midterm congressional Elections, a position that helped fueled what the Post called the largest Republican sweep in nearly half a century...

Latino influence on election day
The study conducted by advocacy organizations as Latino Decisions and sponsored by the National Council of La Raza, Service Employees International Union and America’s Voice, revealed 86% of the Latinos polled supported Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Jerry Brown and U.S. Senate Incumbent Barbara Boxer over Republican Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, respectively. A total of 3,200 voters were interviewed over the phone between Oct. 28 and Nov. 1, with a reported a Margin of Error of plus ...

Did Polls Underestimate Democrats' Latino Vote?
The two Senate races where the actual winner was different from the leader in our polling-based projections were Colorado and Nevada (it’s also probable that we’ll miss Lisa Murkowski’s victory in Alaska once all her write-in votes are — eventually — counted). The miss in Colorado wasn’t bad — our forecast had Michael Bennet as about a 1-point underdog, and he won by 1 point instead, although there are still a few votes left to count. In Nevada, howeve...

Latino Support for Democrats Remains Strong Despite Lack of Immigration Reform
Republicans may have won the House, but immigrant Advocacy Groups are quick to point out that the party was fairly unpopular among Latinos, who helped Democrats win in major races in California, Colorado and Nevada. The Pew Hispanic Center released a report last night on Latino voting in the 2010 Elections, based on Exit Poll data. The numbers were slightly lower than a Latino Decisions Poll of Latino Voters* — Pew found that 64 percent of Latinos chose Democratic Candidates, versus 78 pe...

More on Latinos
Here’s Nate Silver’s analysis of the possibility that Democrats like Reid outperformed the polls because Latinos who prefer to speak Spanish weren’t called. Pew’s overall analysis of the Hispanic vote shows a 64/34 break in favor of Democrats, but that includes states like Florida, which has a big conservative Cuban population. ...

Latino Support for Democrats Remains Strong Despite Lack of Immigration Reform
Republicans may have won the House, but immigrant Advocacy Groups are quick to point out that the party was fairly unpopular among Latinos, who helped Democrats win in major races in California, Colorado and Nevada. The Pew Hispanic Center released a report last night on Latino voting in the 2010 Elections, based on Exit Poll data. The numbers were slightly lower than a Latino Decisions Poll of Latino Voters* — Pew found that 64 percent of Latinos chose Democratic Candidates, versus 78 pe...

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
Longtime Immigration advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) credited Hispanics Wednesday for keeping Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in the Senate. "Latino citizens responded to Majority Leader Harry Reid's aggressive pursuit of Immigration Reform by voting for him in overwhelming numbers," he said in a statement. "They were clearly the difference in his victory." Latinos made up 12 percent of Nevada voters, with 90 percent of them supporting Reid. Angle got only an 8 percent sliver of their ...

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
Longtime Immigration advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) credited Hispanics Wednesday for keeping Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in the Senate. “Latino citizens responded to Majority Leader Harry Reid’s aggressive pursuit of Immigration Reform by voting for him in overwhelming numbers,” he said in a statement. “They were clearly the difference in his victory.” Latinos made up 12 percent of Nevada voters, with 90 percent of them supporting Reid. Angle got only...