Latino Polls Skew Left, Distort Latino Political Landscape

Democratic pollster André Pineda wrote an interesting memo recently in which he claims that, because of the methods used to poll Latinos on political issues, polls that find many Latinos to swing to the left are biased and do not truly represent the political reality.

His main point is that by polling only people with Latino surnames, you’re likely to get a higher percentage of immigrants, who tend to swing left. This also leaves out U.S.-born Latinos, who add a whole different set of political preferences, and are more likely to have non-Latino surnames.

The memo reads in part:

The rapid growth of the Latino electorate and their presence in swing states like Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Florida ensure that news organizations will be fed a steady diet of Latino polling in the lead up to 2012. Many of these polls will have been conducted by researchers who attempt to maximize the efficiency of their calls by only dialing voters with Hispanic surnames. The assumption behind this methodology is either that a preponderance of Latino voters have Hispanic surnames or that Latino voters with Hispanic surnames do not vote differently than Latino voters who do not have Hispanic surnames…

Hispanic voters with Hispanic surnames vote differently than Hispanic voters that do not have Hispanic surnames. For example, in my 2006 post-election poll of California Latino voters, voters who were not tagged as Hispanic said they voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger (43 percent Schwarzenegger – 36 percent Angelides) while voters who were tagged as Hispanic said they voted for the Democratic nominee, Phil Angelides (48 percent Angelides – 29 percent Schwarzenegger). In all 4 states, tagged Hispanics are more Democratic and less Republican than non-tagged Hispanics.

The finding that voters with Hispanic surnames have different political preferences than voters without Hispanic surnames makes sense. My research suggests that alimmigrant populations move to the mean over generations. U.S.-born Vietnamese are not as predominantly Republican as Vietnamese immigrant voters, U.S.-born Cubans are not as predominantly Republican as Cuban immigrant voters and U.S.-born Mexicans are not as predominantly Democratic as Mexican immigrant voters. In my surveys, only 17 to 18 percent of immigrant voters in all four states self-id’ed as Republican while U.S.-born Latino voters ranged between 24 and 31 percent. Knowing that Latino voters move to the mean over generations is the first step towards understanding why voters with Hispanic surnames have different political preferences.

The second step is knowing that U.S.-born Hispanic voters are less likely to have Hispanic surnames than are immigrant voters. This is what one would expect owing to intermarriage and Anglicization. In all four of my polls, immigrants are more likely to be tagged as Hispanic than are U.S.-born Latino voters. Consequently, polls that depend on voters with Hispanic surnames in states with largely Mexican-American Latino populations can be expected to oversample immigrant populations and, as a result, to overstate Democratic strength.

A Politico story about the memo has a response from another Latino pollster claiming that only 5-10% of Latinos do not have Latino surnames, so this data is off. In any case, going into a contentious election in 2012, this information is good for all of us to consider. Follow Pineda on Twitter, @aapineda.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD