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Gary Langer is director of polling at ABC News, where he's covered the beat of public opinion for nearly 20 years - conducting and analyzing ABC News polls, evaluating data from other sources and setting the news division's standards for poll reporting. Langer has won two Emmy awards for ABC's reporting of public opinion polls in Iraq, and The Numbers blog was honored this year as winner of the 2008 Iowa Gallup Award for Excellent Journalism Using Polls.
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Sotomayor: The Political Equation
May 26, 2009 11:38 AM
Beyond the public’s preferences in a Supreme Court nominee, which I blogged about this morning, there’s another little issue at play: the politics of it.
Republicans and conservatives are poised for a spirited challenge to Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination, as our chief congressional correspondent, Jonathan Karl, wrote today. But the Democratic majority in the Senate makes that fight a tough one. And there’s a bigger contest beyond this single battle.
That is the field of electoral politics. Sotomayor would be the high court’s first Hispanic member, a population of considerable political interest. Hispanics represent a growing share of the voting population; 9.5 percent of eligible voters (and 9 percent of actual turnout) in 2008, up from 4.7 percent of eligible voters in 1988 and 8.2 percent in 2004, according to recent Pew Research Center estimates. The comparative youth of this group portends future growth; its comparatively weak turnout rate, 50 percent, also signals potential for yet more Hispanic participation.
As I've covered before, Hispanics are a reliably Democratic voting bloc. They favored Barack Obama by more than 2-1 in November, 67-31 percent, about the average for Democratic presidential candidates in exit polls back to 1976. But it’s also a group in which the Republicans have aimed for inroads: George W. Bush did better than average with Hispanics in his elections, albeit largely via the vote in just two states, Texas (favorite son) and Florida (favorite brother).
More interesting was Bush’s showing among Hispanics who were voting for the first time. Even as he lost Hispanics overall to John Kerry, 58-40 percent, the two split first-time-voter Hispanics, 49-48 percent. And since first-timers accounted for just over a fifth of all Hispanic voters, cementing that group offered big future payoffs to the GOP.
It didn’t happen: Obama last year won first-time Hispanic voters – up to 28 percent of all Hispanics voting – by a smashing 76-23 percent. Having moved that group back aboard, the Democrats clearly would like to keep them.
Tightening the focus, given the concentration of their numbers, Hispanics matter on a state-by-state basis. They accounted for 41 percent of voters in the swing state of New Mexico in November, giving Obama his victory there. And they accounted for 13 to 15 percent of voters in Nevada, Florida and Colorado, all states Obama won with majority Hispanic support, ranging from 57 percent in Florida to 76 percent in Nevada.
Hispanics also accounted for 20 percent of voters in Texas, 18 percent in California and 16 percent in Arizona, again favoring Obama in each of these states. Nowhere else did they reach double-digits, but in close elections – and we’ve seen a few of those – every vote matters.
There is, to be fair, utterly no assurance that appointing the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court will earn Obama, much less his party more broadly, a single Hispanic vote. Voters tend to come to their choices based on a broader array of concerns and candidate attributes, and to make them comparatively – not in a single-issue or single-candidate vacuum.
All the same, group affinity is a powerful force. Assuming there are no as-yet concealed stink bombs in the Sotomayor nomination, appointing the first Hispanic nominee can only help Obama in this group. And opposing that nomination is a path the Republicans may be wise to tread with due caution.
May 26, 2009 in Supreme Court | Permalink | User Comments (4)
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Let me see if I understand the insinuation. Choosing Sotomayor was a good political move for the democrats because it could bring in the Hispanic vote, and it could hurt the republicans if they fight her appointment. This is probably all true, but it's troubling to think Mexico can begin choosing our elected officials.
Posted by: lee | May 26, 2009 8:47:22 PM
Sotomayor is the typical left-wing activist judge who has made some very troubling public statements that will come back to kick her in the rear end. I am sure the Republicans will treat her with a lot more respect than the rude, nasty and condescending Dems treated Judges Alito and Roberts. Since Barry Obummer voted against these two fine judges and even led the fillibuster against Judge Alito, he had better be ready for a battle. This mediocre judge should NOT get a free pass.
Posted by: SunnyR | May 27, 2009 2:04:15 AM
This woman will win approval because the foolish Dems are in control. For those of you who didn't watch the growth of Latino power in South Texas over the years, fasten your seat belt. This woman is not like the black judge the Republicans put in who thumbed his nose at the very legislation that got him where he was. From what I have seen and heard so far, she is the epitome of the LULAC woman. They are for themselves only. No other group, including NAACP, can expect anything good from her. And Anglo Saxons who are non Hispanic, male or female, get out of the way.
Posted by: SuzyQ_TX | May 28, 2009 4:19:32 PM
The problem with selecting Judge Sotomayor to be a Supreme Court nominee is the process and principles of her selection. President Obama has based the his selection process on the bases of race and sex, making that the primary focus of the appointee. He failed to select the appointee on the bases of the appointee's record, rulings, and the nominee's education and history, their Constitutional understanding and previous rulings of law. The process failed, therefore the canidate is flawed and is the worst possible person for the appointment.
Posted by: Derick Trammell | May 28, 2009 8:36:24 PM
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