Some observers have speculated that simmering tensions between Latinos and African-Americans will hamper Barack Obama’s efforts to secure Latino votes in California and elsewhere. As evidence, these commentators point to academic sociology studies as well as lower-level elections in Texas and Florida.

I believe that what stands in the way of Barack Obama and the Latino vote in California is not ethnic tension but rather Hillary Clinton’s head start. The graph above shows where Clinton and Obama were with Latino voters in California who had just participated in the November ‘06 elections. Clinton’s name recognition was 94 percent, with 56 percent of Latino voters viewing her positively and 22 percent negatively. Meanwhile, Obama’s name recognition was only 45 percent, but more than 4 times as many Latino voters viewed him positively (26 percent) as negatively (6 percent).

In my mind, the following two ideas are not mutually exclusive:

1. Many working-class blacks and Latinos are competing for an ever-shrinking slice of the economic pie, and

2. Latino voters are open to the idea of voting for Barack Obama.

One reason I think they are not mutually exclusive is because many of the competing Latinos are not citizens, let alone voters. According to the Census, only 39 percent of Latinos in the United States are eligible to vote and only 13 percent reported voting in 2006. The Latinos who vote in presidential primaries are not undocumented immigrants packed into migrant farmworker housing. Instead, they tend to be U.S.-born English-speakers moving up the socioeconomic ladder.

What voters want and expect from presidential candidates is very different than what they are looking for in municipal candidates. Obama’s resources will give him the opportunity to make his case to Latino primary voters who are open to what he has to say. His challenge is much less his ethnicity than the fact that Latino voters in California already like Clinton and, if the stories from yesterday’s Nevada caucuses are any indication, she is speaking to Latino voters about the issues that matter to them. As J. Patrick Coolican and Michael Mishak of the Las Vegas Sun reported:

This was evident in Clinton’s campaigning the past 10 days, when she aggressively courted Hispanics and hit the issues they cared about. Lately, that means the economy and the mortgage foreclosure crisis, which is hurting working-class Hispanics especially.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 11:46 am and is filed under Blog, Election 2008, Latino Vote, US Presidential. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.