Latin Times: Jeb Bush Exactly As Unpopular Among Latinos As Mitt Romney (uh-oh, Jeb!))

[seafan]

Pretty stunning polling reported from Latin Times, via Crooks and Liars.

From all appearances, Jeb Bush has the best chance among Republican primary contenders to win the Latino vote in 2016. He supports legal status for undocumented immigrants. He speaks fluid if not fluent Spanish. He's married to a Mexican woman with whom he's raised three bicultural and bilingual Latino children. In Florida, a heavily Latino state, Bush won two terms as governor. He's clearly rejected the anti-immigrant comments of Donald Trump . He's done more than any other candidate to appeal to Latinos, which is why he might be surprised to read the latest Univision poll saying that he won't win their vote any more than anti-immigrant white-guy candidate Mitt Romney did in 2012.

According to the poll, Jeb Bush would receive 27 percent of the Latino vote (the poll has a margin of +/- 2.62 percent) in a matchup against Hillary Clinton. Margins aside, that is an uncanny number: Mitt Romney won only 27 percent of the Latino vote in 2012, according to a post-election analysis by Pew .

.....

However, 27 percent is not a good place to start. In 2016, Republicans will need at least 40 percent of the Latino vote to win, according to a campaign adviser for Florida Senator Marco Rubio, another Republican presidential candidate. Rubio, who is Cuban-American but no longer supports legal status for undocumented immigrants. In the Univision poll, Rubio received only 25 percent of support from Latino voters in a hypothetical matchup with Clinton.

.....

The thing to remember is that Jeb!'s appeal comes mostly from hard-line Cuban-Americans in Miami, and, as we are seeing, that demographic is splintering, as younger Cuban-Americans are moving away from the rigid ideology of the GOP, and toward more tolerance, independence and progressivism. Latinos from other areas such as Puerto Rico and South America are increasing their numbers in Florida and other states as well, and are a distinctly different demographic from Cuban-Americans in South Florida.

This news is a strike at the gut of Jeb Bush's viability. (And Marco Rubio's, although he is undergoing a precipitous drop in polling, notwithstanding.)


And then, there is Donald Trump.

Poor Jeb already 'has a sad' that he lacks Obama's oratory skills.


For Jeb Bush, those debates loom closer and closer, and more and more dangerous for his campaign.

"The last thing we need is another Bush…but he raises $100 million. What does a $100 million mean? $100 million means he’s doing favors for so many people. It means lobbyists, it means special interests…when you have a situation where you have people giving you millions of dollars– when they call up, even if it’s not in the best interests of the United States, when they call up, you do what they tell you to do.

…

If you think those people are giving without favors…the good news is…I’ve got $10 billion.

…

A friend of mine…‘I wanna give you a lot of money!’ I said…‘eh, keep your money, I really don’t need it!’

----Donald Trump in New Hampshire, July 16, 2015

[bermudat]

1. Trump is right about that. . .

"The last thing we need is another Bush…but he raises $100 million. What does a $100 million mean? $100 million means he’s doing favors for so many people. It means lobbyists, it means special interests…when you have a situation where you have people giving you millions of dollars– when they call up, even if it’s not in the best interests of the United States, when they call up, you do what they tell you to do."

[seafan]

2. Losing the entire Latino demographic makes the GOP apoplectic.

Election lesson: Hispanic support for Democrats growing in Florida (2012)

In record numbers, Florida Hispanics backed President Obama and other Democratic candidates in Tuesday's election, highlighting a source of future growth for one party while signaling big problems for Republicans.

"Latinos in Florida flexed their muscles and we saw it (Tuesday)," said Alvaro Fernández, director of the Miami Progressive Project, a nonpartisan voter-registration group.

Obama pulled 60 percent of Florida's Hispanic vote, up from the 57 percent he won in 2008, according to exit polls.

Nationally, the president won an estimated 71 percent of the Latino vote.

Within the state's Latino community, Obama got overwhelming support from Puerto Ricans, Florida's second-largest Hispanic group. They voted for the president over Republican challenger Mitt Romney by a 83-17 percent margin, according to one exit poll.

But Democrats also got a boost this year by increasing their share of votes from the state's largest Hispanic bloc, Cuban-Americans, who have traditionally gone GOP, the poll showed.

According to those figures, released Thursday by Miami's Bendixen & Amandi International, 48 percent of Florida's Cuban-Americans backed Obama, while challenger Romney got the rest.

That's a Democratic gain of 13 points among Cuban-Americans over 2008, according to pollster Fernand Amandi, and represents what he called "a sea change."

"The dam has finally burst in the long-awaited Cuban shift," Amandi said. "This is a remarkable change.

.....

Obama racked up big margins with all Hispanic blocs in Florida, according to the Bendixen & Amandi poll. It found that Obama took 79 percent of the South American vote, including 80 percent of Colombians, 82 percent of Peruvians, 79 percent of Ecuadorians, and 76 percent of Venezuelans, 75 percent of Argentinians and 92 percent of Brazilians.

Among Central Americans, including those from Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador, 74 percent voted for Obama, the pollsters found. The percentage of Mexicans in Florida who favored Obama was 66, Dominicans, 81.

The youth and new immigrants are turning away in droves from the hard-line GOP that still demands that the half-century embargo stay in place.



And now, Jeb is forced to pound the pavement. It is a futile exercise; no obscenely bloated SuperPAC will save him.


Jeb Bush courts Hispanic evangelicals in Texas, April 29, 2015

Jeb Bush Visiting Puerto Rico, Latino Evangelicals This Week, April 28, 2015

With eye on Florida, Jeb Bush heads to Puerto Rico to court Republican donors, April 26, 2015 (...err, 'voters'?)

Jeb Bush Leads Republicans in Courting Latino Voters, January 14, 2011 (while he was a 'senior advisor at Barclays')


And another interesting note...

Right wingers have started accusing Univision, America's Spanish language TV broadcasting network, of 'Bush bashing'.


Wonder how Jeb's newly-hired spokeswoman assigned to work with Univision is handling this new Univision polling that finds only 27% Latino support for Bush, in a match with Clinton... Not good for Jeb. Not good.


Undoubtedly, Jeb's low approval is related to this:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Monday he does not support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., a central provision of immigration reform plans being considered by Congress.

Bush has long chided the Republican Party to adopt immigration reform and improve its outreach to minority and immigrant voters. But he said that a path to citizenship would violate the rule of law, and instead is proposing giving a path to legal permanent residency to many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. ---March 4, 2013

In other words, 'I want your vote, but you don't get rights to citizenship.'


Jeb, the Establishment Candidate, is going the way of the dinosaurs.

[n2doc]

3. I expect to see some fawning shows on his wife soon

Shows that won't mention anything about customs issues and such.

[jwirr]

4. So what about if he makes Rubio his VP? What we have going for us is that we want a real path

to citizenship. I would assume that is going to play into this also. We also have several very good Latino people who would make a very good Democratic VP.

So Jebby had better not count on it.

[Octafish]

5. Gee. The only people behind Jebthro are those with Big Money.

Unfortunately in today's USA, they're the only ones that count.

BTW: He is going to need a lot of speech lessons. What they can't buy are brains to help him, uh, learn and understand. I give thanks every day you're on our side, seafan.