The Latino Vote Is Not in the Democratic Bag–Yet

Don’t count Republicans out of the Latino vote – The issues that Bush used to appeal to many Latino voters are still on the table, writes NAM associate editor Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

It’s much to soon for top Democrats to uncork the champagne bottles on the prospect that the Latino vote is signed, sealed and delivered for them in 2008. At first glance, that certainly seems to be the case. The latest Pew Hispanic Center poll found that Latinos are defecting from the GOP camp in droves. The defections are so great that it threatens to unravel all the time-consuming, painstaking work that Bush put into wooing and courting Latino voters in 2000 and 2004.

The courting paid big dividends – so big that some analysts credit the Latino vote with helping put Bush over the top in 2004. According to Pew, though, that wouldn’t happen again. “*

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