Quote from AK Forty Seven:
GOP Hopefuls Losing Ground to Obama Among Latinos
New York â Despite growing disappointment in his handling of immigration issues, Latino voters favor President Barack Obama by six-to-one over any of the Republican presidential hopefuls, showed a Fox News Latino poll conducted under the direction of Latin Insights and released Monday.
The national poll of likely Latino voters indicated that 73 percent of them approved of Obamaâs performance in office, with over half those questioned looking favorably upon his handling of the healthcare debate and the economy, at 66 percent and 58 percent respectively.
Released on the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries in the race for the GOP nomination, the Fox News Latino poll shows former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 35 percent of Latino voter support, to Texas Rep. Ron Paul's 13 percent, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's 12 percent, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's 9 percent.
But the poll shows that the overwhelming choice among likely Latino voters is President Obama. In head-to-head match-ups none of the GOP candidates would garner more than 14 percent of the Latino vote come November, the poll said.
"This is what we're seeing across the country," said Gabriela Domenzain, Obama campaign spokesperson. "The more Latinos learn about the candidates, the more they reject them."
Caught-up in the throes of a bitterly contested primary season, the GOP hopefuls seem to be losing traction among Latino voters.
For Latinos, Immigration is More Personal Than Political, Fox News Latino Poll Says
While the poll indicates that four of five Latinos who voted for Obama in 2008 would vote for him later this year, Latinos who voted for Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain four years ago are now divided between voting for Obama and the Republican candidates. Forty percent said that they favored Obama while 38 percent said they would vote for Romney. Obama also leads Santorum 38 percent to 34, and Gingrich 40 percent to 38.
McCain grabbed 31 percent of the overall Hispanic vote. [/B]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And this too AK47
"One of the problems is that the democrats gave up on the Cuban American community a long time ago,â Sopo said. âThey made no effort to reach it.â
âBut that changed with Obama. He understood that the way for Democrats to make inroads among Cuban Americans was not by patronizing them with visits to Versailles or by talking about Fidel Castro, but rather by addressing the concerns most middle class families face.â
So has there been a shift in partisanship within the Cuban community?
Sopo believes there has been a shift because President Barack Obama received 35 percent of the Cuban American vote when Senator John Kerry received 25 percent of the vote in 2004 (and other democratic presidential candidates received about 20 percent of the vote).
SNIP
"And the younger generation, whether they were born here or emigrated here, might not agree with Castro, but most reject the hardline stance that has not really done much to remove him from power.
This became evident during a protest last month at Versailles over the concert that Colombian singer Juanes performed in Havana.
Some of the older hardliners were outraged at the concert, accusing Juanes and anybody who supported him of being a communist.
Once the concert ended, about 200 hardliners gathered at Versailles where they began destroying CDs with Juanesâ name scribbled across them, apparently as a symbol of destroying his real CDs.
But as the night progressed, more than 400 counter-protesters showed up, mostly younger Cubans who arrived from Cuba within the last decade, voicing their support for the concert.
The younger Cubans ended up forcing the older exiles across the street where they stood on a corner continuing their protest.
By the end of the evening, the pro-Juanes protesters stood on three corners of the intersections, including Versailles, while the older exiles maintained their single corner.
âThey have no voice anymore,â said Alfredo Martinez during the protest, a 29-year-old Cuban immigrant who arrived in Miami during the early 1990s.
âThis is our time now. We donât believe in Castro but we believe in Juanes. He did more for Cuba in one concert than they have done in 40 years.â
SNIP
We have yet to see a Hispanic-American achieve presidency, but that will come in time.
And we shouldnât be surprised if that candidate turns out to be a Cuban-American.
And we should be even less surprised if that candidate turns out to be a democrat.
âThe new generation of Cuban Americans see the world through a different prism than their parents,â Sopo said. âTheir allegiance to the Republican Party is much more diluted.â
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://hispanic.cc/why_cubans_vote_republican.htm