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Hispanics Support Obama over McCain for President by Nearly
Three-to-One, Pew
Hispanic
Center
Survey Finds
Hispanic registered voters support Democrat Barack Obama for
president over Republican John McCain by 66% to 23%, according to a
nationwide survey of 2,015 Latinos conducted by the
Pew
Hispanic
Center, a project of the
Pew
Research
Center, from June 9 through
July 13, 2008.

The presumptive Democratic nominee's strong showing in this survey
represents a sharp reversal in his fortunes from the primaries, when
Obama lost the Latino vote to Hillary Clinton by a nearly two-to-one
ratio, giving rise to speculation in some quarters that Hispanics
were disinclined to vote for a black candidate.
In
this new survey, three times as many respondents said being black
would help Obama (32%) with Latino voters than said it would hurt
him (11%); the majority (53%) said his race would make no difference
to Latino voters.
In
addition to their strong support for Obama, Latino voters have moved
sharply into the Democratic camp in the past two years, reversing a
pro-GOP tide that had been evident among Latinos earlier in the
decade. Some 65% of Latino registered voters now say they identify
with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with just 26% who
identify with or lean toward the GOP. This 39 percentage point
Democratic Party identification edge is larger than it has been at
any time this decade; as recently as 2006, the partisan gap was just
21 percentage points.

The report also examines Hispanic registered voter engagement, party
identification, ratings of national conditions, and top campaign
issues.
The report,
2008 National Survey of Latinos: Hispanic Voter Attitudes, is
available at the Pew Hispanic Center's website,
www.pewhispanic.org.
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