On this Sunday's meet the press, Senator Mel Martinez acknowledged that the way the national Republican Party has demonized Hispanics these past few years may make it in impossible for their Party to win Presidential elections for years to come. MTP quoted NDN and Simon, "If the Republicans don't make their peace with Hispanic voters, they're not going to win presidential elections anymore. The math just isn't there." This back and forth has now put tremendous public pressure on the GOP to turn around the full-on condemnation of their party among Hispanics. The GOP could help itself avoid political annihilation by abandoning the stance seen by many as a level of racial intolerance unacceptable in a new age of Obama, and by working with President-elect Obama to pass comprehensive immigration reform ASAP. This moment may really be a game-changer for both parties.
Let's not forget, Obama's victory among Hispanics may still be short-lived if he does not follow through on his promises to this community - as stated by Dan Schnur, Republican strategist: "Candidates don't cause realignments, presidents do. Candidate Obama has certainly created the conditions for potential realignment, but it's going to be up to President Obama to govern in a way that can make that happen." And that means passing immigration reform during his first year. Hispanics are not forgetting about his promise - on this Sunday's Al Punto,Jorge Ramos asked all his guests about the prospects of immigration reform. He asked Sen. Bob Menendez (NJ): Will [Obama] fulfill the promise he's made to Hispanics to pass immigration reform? Polls show that people care about the economy, education, etc. but the issue of immigration is still at the forefront for the Hispanic community....This is a big promise, how will he do it?Sen. Menendez responded that Barack Obama has remained steadfast on immigration since his votes for reform last summer.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez was also asked and noted, "Barack Obama owes his victory to the large Hispanic turnout," as Obama invested more resources in reaching out to this community than Kerry and Bush together in 2004. When asked, "Can he fulfill this promise, or is it just rhetoric?" Luis Gutierrez reported that he has already spoken to Obama staff and that he is already working to strategize how to move on immigration reform, "It's really important to fulfill those promises," that's why on November 15 Rep. Gutierrez is holding a rally and inviting all U.S. citizens who know of undocumented persons to demand action - "We have to continue putting pressure on the administration." And Republican Mario Diaz-Balart agreed, although he opposes Sen. Obama's stance on Cuba policy, etc., he agreed to work to pass immigration reform alongside Rep. Gutierrez.
An article in the Politico today discusses how all "Dem groups" are claiming the win for Barack Obama - the truth is that while Hispanics are still not a "Dem" group, it is undeniable that it was Hispanics - the ultimate swing electorate - who delivered key battleground states like IN, NM, and FL for Barack Obama, and allowed for a sizeable lead in CO and NV due to their numbers in those states and because they held record shares of the electorate. "Without the Latino vote, we would not have won those states," said Federico Pena,national co-chairman of the Obama campaign. And Hispanics were also influential in Obama's victory in Virginia and North Carolina.
For their part, Republicans must decide how to become part of the 21st century if their party is to survive. The immigrant-issues coalition is expanding to include other ethnicities. Mercury News reports, this election was not only an appreciation for Obama's multicultural upbringing, but also a rejection of the Republican-led "demonization" of immigrants, particularly of Hispanic and Muslim backgrounds, in recent years. John McCain could help his party in this regard, at least alleviating some of the strongest negative feelings towards the Republican Party by supporting comprehensive immigration reform in 2009. Beto Cardenas, former counsel to Kay Bailey Hutchinson: "When we have laws that make it easier to get that labor legally, it will be easier to enforce the laws. Such reform could also protect the rights of the workers, who too frequently are subject to exploitation because they are afraid to report abuses...I think there's a will to address the issue if it can be shown it enhances the economic health of the country," he said.
As noted by Dan, NDN's narrative has been shaping analysis of the election, not only in the U.S., but in Mexico and elsewhere. The newspaper of largest circulation in Mexico (along with Reforma), El Universal, has followed NDN's analysis of the Hispanic vote in this election. In June, Alejandro Meneses published a piece on NDN's findings, contained in Hispanics Rising, and on Andres's analysis of the role of immigration in this election. In September, Jaime Hernandez wrote about the candidates' courtship of Hispanics and noted Simon's point that "John McCain gave in to the right wing of his party and abandoned support of his own [immigration] legislation." Jaime also cited our analysis and projections in late October. Finally, WilbertTorreenviadoof El Universal, and Mauricio Ferrer of La Jornada(another major national newspaper) have both published NDN's preliminary analysis of the Hispanic Vote and reported our narrative of Obama's new 21st century coalition and the new generation of politics that has been born with this campaign.
The Hill asked a few folks to offer their election predictions late last week, so I had to commit to something. You can find my full analysis here. The bottom line - Obama 53, McCain 46, Obama wins 353 in the Electoral College. Dems get to 59 in the Senate and pick up 20 seats in the House.
And a new day dawns in Washington. A new and better day.
As I wrote about during the primary, Dixville Notch, NH, reports the nations' first returns just after the the stroke of midnight on Election Day. Tonight, in a nearly unprecedented victory, U.S. Senator Barack Obama won 71% of the vote in the decidedly conservative New Hampshire hamlet, defeating U.S. Sen. John McCain 15-6 at the Basalm's Resort.
Kos shows the historical significance of a Dixville win.
In the New Hampshire Senate race, former Governor Jeanne Shaheen defeated Incumbant U.S. Sen. John Sununu in Dixville Notch.
In another popular election bellwether, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Washington Redskins tonight. Since the Redskins moved to Washington in 1937, politicos have looked to their final game before the Presidential election. If the Redskins win, the party that won the popular vote in the previous election will win on Tuesday. If the Redskins lose, as they did tonight, when Redskins' Quarterback Jason Campbell was made to look foolish at the hands of the fearsome Steelers defense led by Dick LeBeau (who has been in the NFL since the Eisenhower Administration), the party who lost the last popular vote went on to win the Presidential race.
I'm not referring to tomorrow's final contest - although we can safely estimatethat this could be a landslide win for Obama. What I'm referring to is that regardless of the outcome of the election, Barack Obama has caused a major shift in the electoral map, and the shift means a fundamental change in the politics of this country.
Barack Obama has changed the culture of politics. He's changed the culture of politics because he's formed an entirely new "base" of supporters (millenials, Hispanics, and many independents), he's recruited record numbers of organizers and an unprecedented grass-roots structure, and he's been able to get people to participate in the democratic process at record levels, as evidenced by the results of early voting this year. We're seeing an electoral map that could change politics for 20-30 years, with Iowa going for a Democrat, and former Republican strongholds like Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, and Florida flipping, or at least becoming battleground states.
Barack's new political movement raised about $600 million total, and drew from 3.2 million individual donors - a record level. This campaign has transformed thousands of communities-and revolutionized the way organizing itself will be understood and practiced for at least the next generation. Regardless who governs, Obama has created an organization at the community level that, instead of being based on X leadership roles to fill, it has created leadership roles for as many leaders as there are. Thus creating a solid, durable, series of existing networks. And these networks will remain, so that they can become mobilized once again, for any cause. A note on college organizers put it best:
So we have people in charge of whatever they ARE. We are saying, ‘What's your social network?' We say, ‘OK, you're The Balcony Coordinator-your job is to go party at Balcony [a local bar] every weekend-like you do anyways-but now wear a Barack Obama button-and bring voter reg forms.
Millenials and the largest minority - Hispanics - comprise a large portion of this new coalition. To me, that means that Latinos and Latinas are not only participating civically, but they are now volunteeringand organizing for a campaign in record numbers.
This is owed in part to the important push on the part of the Obama campaign to encourage early voting. Barack Obama has invested far more heavily in turning out early votes than past Democratic nominees and that effort has provided results. Nationally, Barack Obama is ahead 59%-40% among early voters. Analysts say that 1 in 3 of all voters have voted early, up from 22.5 percent in 2004 and just 7 percent in 1992.
Democrats and Republicans voted in roughly equal numbers. That, however, represents a departure from 2004, when many more Republicans than Democrats cast ballots before election day. Republicans won the battle for absentee votes, but Democrats won among those voting in person.
Florida is a striking example of this. Republicans were voting at a heavier pace in the absentee ballots, but the number of in-person votes cast exceeded the number of absentees. 38% of all Florida voters have cast ballots - 4.2-million votes - and 331,274 more Democrats voted early than Republicans. Another 710,066 independents have voted.
In Colorado, the number of early votes cast equals slightly more than half of the total number of votes cast -- early and on Election Day - in 2004.
In Nevada, Democrats have cast 225,670 of the 438,129 ballots (51.5%) in the two most populous counties, Las Vegas's Clark County and Reno's Washoe. Republicans cast 31.3% with the remainder cast by Independents. Those two counties account for about 90% of the state's turnout. Early voting is expected to make up 60% of the Silver State's 2008 ballots. Andres was quoted in the Wall Street Journal, pointing out:
John McCainwill need to nab between 75% to 80% of the Independent vote, a tall order given that Nevada polling shows nothing like that level of support. He also would need about 12% to 15% of the Democratic vote, perhaps an easier prospect.
In North Carolina, 2,573,206, or about 41% of the state's 6,232,230 registered voters have voted early, and the vote breaks down as a little over 51% Democrats and about 30% Republicans. The rest were unaffiliated or libertarian.
In Georgia, more than one million people have voted, a big jump from the less than 500,000 people who voted early four years ago.
Early voting actually makes it harder for attempts to disenfranchise voters to stop eligible voters from casting ballots. Dirty tricks are also harder to pull off. If political operatives want to jam get-out-the-vote telephone lines, as they did on Election Day in New Hampshire in 2002, it would be harder to do if people voted over two weeks. Early voting also reduces the burden on election systems that are often stretched near to the breaking point. In 2004, voters waited in lines as long as 10 hours. And there is every indication that lines on Tuesday, in some places and at some times, will again be extraordinarily long. The more people who vote early, the fewer who will be lined up at the polls on Election Day.
With evident success of early-voting, the states that have not adopted it - including New York - should do so. Congress should also mandate early voting for federal elections - ideally as part of a larger federal bill that would fix the wide array of problems with the electoral system. Today, the idea that all voting must occur in a 15-hour window, or less, on a single day is as outdated as the punch-card voting machine.
Great piece in The Hill today. Simon explains an important part of the "21st Century Coalition" Barack Obama has formed to win this race - Hispanics - and the GOP's most important miscalculation:
Democrats may not get to 60 in the Senate, but they will have a huge night on Tuesday, according to Simon Rosenberg. Rosenberg heads the NDN, which is a progressive think tank and advocacy organization.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will beat Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) 53 to 46 percent nationally and win 353 electoral votes, Rosenberg said. Democrats will pick up 20 seats in the House and eight in the upper chamber, he predicted.
The big story coming out of the election, according to Rosenberg, will be that "Democrats have figured out how to win a presidential race."
The 2008 election will be the first in which a Democrat wins a majority vote without winning the South, he added.
"This is a new electoral map. This is a game-changer," Rosenberg stated, explaining that the Hispanic vote and Southwest voters going for Democrats will put the GOP in an electoral bind in the future.
"The way Republicans handled immigration is one of the greatest political mistakes in the last 50 years," he said.
For the past year I've been saying that the Presidential wanted to be a 8-10 point Democrat win. If you look at the structure underneath the candidates, the spread of the generic polls (D vs R) have been consistently 8-10 points, as has Party ID. For the last several weeks a variety of factors seemed to be keeping the race closer to 5-7 points, and on Friday I made my official prediction we would end up 53-46. Throughout the Fall I've been saying that McCain would just to have to end up at 45-46 - it was just too hard to imagine Obama winning the race by more than 10 points in a 2 way race.
But as I wrote over the weekend there is now evidence that in fact the election rather than tightening is breaking towards Obama, and that McCain is still - incredibly - not consistently polling in the mid 40s. Yesterday's Gallup track found the generic Presidential number now at 53-41 - 12 points! - now similar to their spread among likely voters. The question from the day Obama won the nomination was would this skinny bi-racial kid with a funny name whom few knew even two years ago be able to realize the structural potential of this race?
Increasingly it appears that yes indeed Senator Obama is seizing this historic moment, and in the process is ushering what may very well be a new and very 21st century Democratic era.
Both candidates are fighting to make their closing arguments to Hispanics over the less than three days until the Presidential election as they appear tonight on Univision's internationally known variety show, "Sábado Gigante." Even non-Spanish speaking Americans throughout the U.S. have heard of the famous host, "Don Francisco" and his beautiful female co-hosts. The show takes a more serious turn tonight, as it airs Don Francisco's interviews with Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain during which they discussed the most pressing issues in the Hispanic community. Sen. McCain gave his interview in Sedona, AZ, Sen. Barack Obama taped his during a campaign visit to Miami, FL.
These interviews began in 2000 during George W. Bush and Al Gore's presidential campaigns, and followed with Bush and Kerry in 2004. You can watch tonight's interviews with Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain when they air during the show's second hour, at 9 p.m. EST on Univision (check local listings).
In reviewing the polls today the trend lines continued unaltered - Obama holds his commanding lead with no evidence that the race is in any way breaking towards McCain. As DemFromCT's am report shows there was no meaningful movement towards McCain overnight and Obama's numbers held. Gallup's 3 daily tracks released at 1pm this afternoon have all sorts of bad news for McCain, with the 2 likely voter tracks each now having the race 52-42 for Obama. For all this talk that the late breaking vote may break to McCain there is no evidence of this. What still must be terrifying to the national GOP is that there are so many late polls with Obama ahead by 8-12 points, and with their man still mired in the low 40s.
I offered some thoughts yesterday on why the race the broke the way it did this Fall. Called Keys to the Fall: Obama Leads, McCain Stumbles, you can find it on the Huffington Post (where it ran on the home page for almost 24 hours) or a version right here on our blog.
So.....I was asked by a newspaper to offer my predictions for Tuesday. I committed to Obama 53, McCain 46 and Obama claiming 353 electoral college votes. But given the polls of recent days there is a remote but growing possibility that Obama wins by 10 points or more.
Also if you haven't seen it read Jonathan Weisman's front page political story in the Wall Street Journal today. It includes this passage, which includes data and arguments that will be familiar to our readers:
Demographics also shifted in the right places to give Democrats a lift. In Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina, the influx of a younger, more-educated populace brought voters more receptive to the Democrats' message. A concerted Republican campaign to curb illegal immigration turned a wave of new foreign-born voters against the GOP in Florida, Nevada and Colorado, just as the Latino vote in those states was growing.
Between 2000 and this year, the Hispanic electorate will have doubled, to 12% of voters, according to Census data and NDN, a Democratic group that studies the electorate. That growth has been concentrated in once-Republican states, not only in the Mountain West but in the South. By 2006, Hispanics represented 31% of voters in New Mexico, 13% in Nevada, 11% in Florida and 8% in Colorado.
President Bush and his political team were able to ride that wave, nearly doubling the GOP's share of the Latino vote from 21% in 1996 to 40% in 2004, according to exit polls. Then came 2006 and the Republican Party embrace of get-tough legislation on illegal immigration, followed by Republican efforts to kill bipartisan bills to stiffen border enforcement and provide illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship.
In 2006, Republican support among Hispanics fell to 30%. Even Sen. McCain, who co-authored the bipartisan immigration legislation, does not appear able to reverse the trend. An NDN poll in August, when Sens. Obama and McCain were virtually tied in the polls, found Sen. Obama leading among Colorado Hispanics 56% to 26% and Nevada Hispanics 62% to 20%.
In Colorado alone, more than 70,000 new Latino voters have registered since 2004. An Associated Press-GFK poll released Wednesday found that 16% of Colorado's likely voters identify themselves as Hispanic -- and 70% of them back Sen. Obama.
The growth of professional havens in Northern Virginia, the Research Triangle of Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and the Boulder-Denver corridor of Colorado may also be contributing to the changing electoral landscape. Voters in such places tend to be younger, more ethnically and racially diverse and less interested in social-conservative issues, such as abortion and gay marriage. And there are a lot of them: 83 million so-called millennials between ages 19 and 37, compared with 74 million Baby Boomers between 51 and 69.
530pm Update: This from today's Washington Post track analysis:
In today's Washington Post-ABC News daily tracking poll, Obama holds a 53 to 44 percent lead over McCain, unchanged from yesterday, and little in the survey suggests that trimming the margin would be an easy feat.
For the first time, the slice of likely voters who report they will "definitely" vote for Obama has (by just a hair) now reached 50 percent, a milestone which George W. Bush never reached in Post-ABC tracking polls in 2004 or 2000, and the number of movable voters - those who said they could change their minds or who remain undecided - has slimmed to 7 percent.
McCain's campaigning over the past week has not convinced more voters that Obama is a risky choice, nor has he gained ground as the candidate better able to handle taxes or the economy. (Obama holds a 13-point advantage on taxes, his largest of the campaign, and a 14-point lead on the economy.) For the second time in Post-ABC polling, Obama has crossed into majority support as the candidate better able to manage an unexpected crisis.
One plus for McCain: Strong enthusiasm among his supporters has moved up a bit to 41 percent, the highest level it's been since the Republican convention, but still far behind the 68 percent of Obama supporters who are deeply enthused by his candidacy.
Las Vegas -- NDN, a Washington, DC-based progressive think tank, yesterday held a news conference with U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada and several Hispanic community leaders -- Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated individuals -- to denounce deceptive practices targeted toward Hispanic citizens in an effort to prevent them from voting.
According to news reports and anecdotal evidence, some Hispanic voters have received calls asking for personal information and telling them they can vote over the phone, which is not a legal practice. Reid, NDN and others urged Hispanic citizens to make their voices heard by voting on Election Day.
Said Senator Reid: "Any effort to silence voters' voices is despicable and runs counter to the principles of our democracy. I commend Univision and others for taking this matter seriously and for taking action. I call on the people who are behind these tactics to stop immediately so we can have a fair election that allows every voter to be heard."
Said Andres Ramirez, Vice President of NDN's Hispanic Programs: "Any voter who has encountered disturbing suppression tactics should call the Nevada Secretary of State. We are increasingly concerned about the smear campaigns and deceptive tactics targeted at the Latino community, and we want to educate voters about their rights."
Citizens who feel they have been victims of such a scam should call the Nevada Secretary of State at 775-684-5705.
At yesterday's news conference, Reid, Ramirez and the public officials and community leaders unveiled a new PSA airing on Univision in Reno and Las Vegas taped in response to the disturbing phone calls. Univision-affiliated radio stations in Nevada also are airing this PSA on radio. Click here for Fox News video of the conference.
Reid and NDN were joined at the news conference by several Hispanic leaders, including State Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen, State Assemblyman Moises Denis and Geoconda Arguello Kline, President of the Las Vegas Culinary Union Local 226.
Following this effort in Nevada to safeguard the Hispanic vote, Fundacion Azteca America encouraged the Hispanic community to get out and vote with a "No Te Espantes Ve y Vota" ("Don't be Scared, Go Vote") voter turnout rally today in front of the L.A. City Hall, aiming to dispel any misconceptions, fears or doubts that first-time voters may have leading up to the November 4 elections.
Participants included: Luis J. Echarte, Chairman of Fundación Azteca America and Azteca America Network; Nora Vargas, Executive Director Latinos Issues Forum; Eric Garcetti, President of the Los Angeles City Council; Gilbert Cedillo, California State Senator; Rocky Delgadillo, Los Angeles City Attorney; John Trasviña, President and General Counsel of MALDEF and Los Angeles City Council members Richard Alarcon, Jose Huizar, Janice Hahn, Jan Perry and Tom LaBonge.
