Despite their dissatisfaction with the Obama administration’s record number of deportations of undocumented Hispanic immigrants over the last three years, Latino voters still favor President Barack Obama by a 2-to-1 margin over the Republican presidential candidates, according to a poll released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.
In a hypothetical 2012 matchup between the president and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Mr. Obama wins 68 to 23 percent among registered Hispanic voters. Against Texas Governor Rick Perry, the president wins by a similar margin of 69 to 23 percent. That’s surprising, considering Mr. Perry supported a state policy in Texas to award in state tuition to children of undocumented immigrants.
“It is interesting that among Latino voters, the voters who are registered, there is a lot of support for the Democrats, but also for Barack Obama,” Mark Hugo Lopez, executive director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said in an interview with CNN Thursday.
In 2008, 67 percent of Latino voters voted for President Obama versus just 31 percent for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ.).
According to CNN, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 395,000 undocumented immigrants in 2009 and 387,000 in 2010.
Hispanic voters should prove to be a crucial voting bloc for President Obama, especially in crucial swing states where they have large populations, such as Virginia, Florida and North Carolina.
The Pew poll resulted in a 49 percent job approval rating for the president from Hispanic voters, that is a 9 percent drop from the 58 percent rating they gave him in 2010.
The poll was conducted between November 9th and December 7th, among 1,220 Latino adults, 557 of which are registered voters. The margin of error for registered voters was plus or minus 5.2 percentage points, and plus or minus 3.6 percentage points for non registered voters.
