WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- While Democrats have become obsessed with the idea that gay marriage hijacked the election, pundits argue the widespread defection of Hispanics to the Republican Party should elicit a larger response.
Despite their historical status as a major bloc of Democrats' base, last week's election demonstrated Hispanics' votes should not be taken for granted. According to the New Democrat Network, which engaged in significant voter-outreach efforts, gains were made or losses were staunched in states where aggressive campaigns were launched to win over the Hispanic vote -- but that was all.
NDN's Maria Cardona said Tuesday's results "absolutely" were a disappointment. "Clearly we didn't win," she said. Moreover, the trend of Hispanic voting patterns "is going in a dangerous direction."
Exit polling indicated that President Bush received unprecedented levels of support from Hispanic voters, who turned out in record numbers to cast their ballots Tuesday. The League of United Latin Citizens reported Hispanic voting increased by as much at 50 percent from 2000 to nearly 9 million voters.
Of those voters, some 44 percent of them supported Bush, an increase of 9 percentage points from the already high levels he received in 2000.
"The lesson we need to take away from this is that the Hispanic vote can no longer be seen as a base vote for the Democratic Party," Cardona told United Press International.
She added, however, that this is "a very difficult message to carry forward, because ... a lot of people are operating on assumptions of 20 years ago."
From here, the issue of Republican dominance on the questions of morals comes into play. A large number of Hispanics are Catholic and hold more conservative views on issues of reproductive rights such as abortion, aligned more often with the Republican Party's stand on the issue.
LULAC National Executive Director Brent Wilkes told UPI he was surprised by Bush's high polling among Hispanic voters, especially given survey results right before the election, but that it wasn't a "fluke."
This election cycle Republicans excised wedge issues that previously left Hispanics unable to vote for them, Wilkes said. The Democratic Party traditionally benefited from the GOP focus on anti-immigrant and English-only measures that historically turned off Hispanic voters. Without those, however, Hispanics were willing to give Republicans a second look.
Wilkes and Cardona attributed the push in large part to Bush and his personal effort to pull Hispanics into the Republican Party.
"Whether or not (Bush) is as strong on agenda items is a question I guess that the community has to answer for itself, but by taking away the wedge issues it opened up the possibility for Hispanics to take a look at him in a different light," Wilkes said.
For Republicans, this indicates they could further increase their proportion of the Hispanic vote as they keep these issues off the table. This also means a comparable effort by Democrats could pull Latino voters back in their direction.
The New Democrat Network launched Spanish-language advertisements in several battleground states and received the best response in Florida, Colorado and Nevada. Kerry increased the Democratic share of the Hispanic vote in Florida from 34 percent for Vice President Al Gore in 2000 to 44 percent Tuesday, squeezing Bush's share from 65 percent to 56 percent.
In Colorado there was a net 6-point shift in Kerry's favor in the presidential election. And in Nevada, Democrats slipped from 64 percent to 60 percent of the Latino vote, which Cardona said kept pace with their goal of remaining above 60 percent.
Democrats' biggest loses were in New Mexico and Arizona, where the ticket saw a net loss of 22 and 18 points, respectively. Cardona attributed the losses in Arizona to the overall pullout of Democratic campaign efforts in the state, while the majority of Hispanic voters in New Mexico are English-speaking and therefore weren't targeted by NDN's Spanish-language ads.
Cardona said the NDN had been hammering the issue of Hispanic voters -- and their new place as a major swing-vote population -- for two years ahead of the election. The political action committee threw major resources at this population, she said, including launching its voter-outreach campaign an unprecedented eight months before Election Day.
But among the more established avenues, including the Kerry campaign and the Democratic National Committee, there was a major failure to appreciate the party's tenuous grip on Hispanic voters.
They "did not do a sufficient enough job in resource deployment for Spanish-language media," Cardona said of these two parties.
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, meanwhile, told UPI she thought a large part of the problem was the campaign's inability to speak to the issues more important to Latino voters. The Kerry campaign's "lack of an economic message at the end" was a major problem for a constituency whose top concerns are healthcare, the economy and education.
"We didn't end on that," Lake said of those three issues, "and that hurt us."
According to Wilkes, Democrats are just going to have to try harder to win this population.
"It turns out that perhaps Latinos are not Democratic-loyal constituencies," he said.
"Now you've got to start earning the vote ... this vote really is in play and they've got to earn it," he added.
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