Hispanics favor Kerry over Bush

A poll released this week shows Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry has a substantial lead over President Bush among Hispanics, but the numbers haven’t changed much, if any, from the 2000 election.

The Democratic National Committee said Mr. Bush hasn’t been able to reach Hispanic voters because of his failure to fulfill promises he made during the 2000 campaign. It cited a poll by Zogby International that shows 58 percent of likely Hispanic voters favor Mr. Kerry, while 33 percent liked Mr. Bush.

The poll of 1,000 registered Hispanic voters was conducted March 29-30 and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

“The record shows that Hispanics are worse off under Bush, and his actions on policies such as jobs, education, homeownership, access to health care, immigration, and tax cuts for the wealthy continue to be more hurtful than helpful for Hispanic families,” DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe said.

But when compared with the numbers from the 2000 election, the results show not much has changed.

Mr. Bush garnered 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2000, while Vice President Al Gore received 62 percent.

“Fifty-eight percent is not where Democrats want to be,” said Maria T. Cardona, director of the Hispanic Project for New Democrats Network, a Washington-based liberal advocacy and strategy group.

Miss Cardona, a former staffer for the DNC, said polling of the general electorate shows that 6 percent of the population is undecided heading into the November election.

“But when you look at the Latino community, the number of undecided skyrockets to about 30 percent,” she said. “Democrats need to be in the high 60s or the low 70s. if we want to take back the White House, we can’t let Bush get close to 40 percent.”

Officials at the DNC, however, said the poll was good news for Democrats.

“We’re very optimistic. The numbers we’re seeing now are for an incumbent president and a man who has been a candidate for only a month,” DNC spokeswoman Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli said.

She said Mr. Bush did target Hispanics in 2000 with Spanish-language ads, “making a lot of promises that have been broken.”

A Bush campaign official told The Washington Times earlier this week that they were not concerned about the numbers and that Mr. Kerry “has a very thin record with Latino voters.”

Miss Cardona said the senator from Massachusetts will do well with Hispanics if he focuses on his record on education, jobs and health care, and touts his military background.

“The hurdle [Mr. Kerry] faces is he needs to get in touch with the Latino community on a personal level, and that is beginning to happen,” she said.

Gabriela Lemus, director of policy and legislation for the League of United Latin American Citizens, said both candidates have ground to make up with Hispanics, especially in education. She said Hispanics are looking for the best plan, “and advertising to us in Spanish is not enough.”

“We see No Child Left Behind as an unfunded mandate, and although it is Mr. Bush’s policy, the last time I checked Mr. Kerry supported it too,” Miss Lemus said.

Miss Cardona authored a strategy memo to the DNC explaining that Spanish-language advertising and dialogue were necessary to reach a Hispanic voter base.

She asserted that the 1986 amnesty for Hispanic illegals and the influx of immigrants throughout the 1990s altered the demographics of the Hispanic community.

“In 1988, the majority of Latinos were second- and third-generation Americans and 82 percent spoke English. … Now, over 50 percent of Latino voters are [speaking Spanish as their first language] and are foreign-born,” Miss Cardona said.