Amnesty buffs pay attention.

“Key Points

* Exit polls from Election Day indicated that President Barack Obama won 67 percent of the Latino vote, and John McCain 32 percent. This compares to estimates of Latino support for George W. Bush in the range of 39 percent or higher in 2004. In 2000, Bush is thought to have received 35 percent of the Latino vote.

* The drop in support among Latinos for Republicans between 2004 and 2008 was part of a broad-based electoral movement away from the GOP, and was hardly specific to that demographic group. McCain received only 57 percent of the white male vote, compared with 62 percent for Bush in 2004, and McCain’s 55 percent of regular churchgoers was significantly lower than Bush’s 61 percent.

* Credible surveys indicate that the major policy concerns of Latinos were no different than the concerns of non-Latinos: The economy and jobs topped the list.

* There is little evidence that immigration policy was an influential factor in Latinos’ choice between the two candidates once basic party predispositions are taken into account.

* McCain’s consistent history of advocating a legalization program for illegal immigrants made no impression on Latino voters.

* McCain lost the Latino vote by a wide margin even in his home state of Arizona, 56 to 41 percent. This was in spite of widespread news coverage of his immigration stance in that state.

* In 2008, Latino voters supported the GOP ticket at levels above the usual 30 percent only when they resided in states that were already safely in GOP hands.

* The size of the Latino voting population should be kept in perspective alongside other subsets of the electorate. An estimated 11.8 million voters were of Latino ancestry, compared with 17 million African Americans, 19.7 million veterans, 23.6 million young people, 45 million conservatives, and 34 million born-again white Christians.”

So you see that it had little to do with whether or not one candidate supported amnesty or not. However, this tidbit is interesting via The Corner’s Mark Krikorian:

“In fact, the smaller share of the Hispanic that McCain got this time, compared with Bush in 2004, isn’t attributable to immigration, a point that sometime-NROnik Jim Gimpel explores in a new piece I published today, “Latino Voting in the 2008 Election: Part of a Broader Electoral Movement.” Steve Malanga has a piece in the new City Journal (the text isn’t online, I’m afraid) along the same lines. And The American Cause is releasing on Thursday a more fine-grained study that looks at each House seat lost by the GOP, and concludes that “every defeated GOP Congressional candidate supported amnesty or open border policies for illegal aliens – or had Democratic contenders who took tough stands on illegal immigration.”

That folks is a travesty and the price you pay for compromising principles over popularity.

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