Dur­ing the 2008 elec­tion cam­paign, then-​​Senator Barack Obama adopted a Span­ish lan­guage slo­gan that was co-​​opted from Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Work­ers: “¡Sí se puede!” which roughly trans­lated means the same as his Eng­lish slo­gan: “Yes, We Can!”

Let’s exam­ine the state of play (estado de juego) for the His­panic vote in the 2012 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

In 2008, 67 per­cent of the His­panic vote went to Sen­a­tor Obama, while 31 per­cent went to Sen­a­tor John McCain. This mar­gin in the His­panic vote helped Obama win the bat­tle­ground states of Nevada, Col­orado and New Mexico.

States Ranked by Per­cent His­panic Pop­u­la­tion (Source: US Cen­sus data)
Rank State Hisp% Obama – McCain
1 New Mex­ico 44.9% +14.7%
2 Cal­i­for­nia 36.6% +23.6%
3 Texas 36.5% –11.7%
4 Ari­zona 30.1% –8.8%
5 Nevada 25.7% +12.4%
6 Florida 21.0% +2.5%
7 Col­orado 20.2% +8.6%
8 New York 16.7% +25.5%
9 New Jer­sey 16.3% +14.7%
10 Illi­nois 15.2% +24.9%

Florida is some­thing of a spe­cial case because of its Cuban-​​American pop­u­la­tion. Obama earned 35 per­cent sup­port amongst Cuban-​​Americans over­all, but there is a huge dif­fer­ence amongst dif­fer­ent age groups: he got two-​​thirds of the vote from Cuban-​​Americans aged under 29, but only one-​​third from the middle-​​aged Cuban-​​Americans (50 to 64) and only one-​​fifth of the older Cuban-​​Americans (65+).

Last week, an Investor’s Busi­ness Daily /​ Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor /​ TIPP poll showed Obama’s sup­port at 80 per­cent ver­sus Romney’s at 12 per­cent. A par­ti­san Daily Kos /​ PPP /​ SEIU poll showed Obama’s sup­port amongst His­pan­ics at 72 per­cent, ver­sus 22 per­cent for Romney.

Ari­zona may be in play this elec­tion year. Even with native son John McCain on the bal­lot, and strong Repub­li­can ten­den­cies in the recent past, there were merely nine per­cent­age points sep­a­rat­ing McCain and Obama. Now with McCain out of the race, and immi­gra­tion poli­cies pushed through by Republican-​​led leg­is­la­tures increas­ingly unpop­u­lar amongst His­pan­ics, the Obama camp believes (or says they believe) that Ari­zona may swing Demo­c­ra­tic this cycle.

Texas is lightly polled, but shows a con­sis­tent seven-​​point (or so) Rom­ney lead in PPP (Democratic-​​leaning) polling data. Texas may not go Demo­c­ra­tic in this Pres­i­den­tial cycle, but if Obama’s field gen­er­als can open up another front in Texas, that may drain resources from other states that Rom­ney needs to bat­tle in.

Put another way, 35 of the 101 elec­toral votes (Florida at 25 and Nevada at six) that Michael rated as a “tossup” in his May 3 Reëlec­tion Watch have a sig­nif­i­cant His­panic pop­u­la­tion. Given that Rom­ney needs to “run the table” amongst the tossup states if he is to win the elec­tion, a highly moti­vated His­panic vot­ing bloc would be deadly for his chances.

What sort of thing might moti­vate this bloc? The Supreme Court is due to rule on Arizona’s con­tro­ver­sial immi­gra­tion law. Regard­less of which direc­tion the Court votes, the out­come is likely to fur­ther solid­ify the antipa­thy between His­pan­ics (at least those who are not aged Cuban-​​Americans) and the Repub­li­can Party. Com­bined with the antipa­thy between women and the Repub­li­can Party, the mak­ings of a wave elec­tion are in place, even if all the ele­ments of the wave are not yet assembled.

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