Hispanics Hate Trump, Love Hillary, Indifferent to Rest of Republican Field
Trump is at -51 net favorability and Clinton at +40. The rest of the field is at "Who?"
The headline of a Gallup analysis, “Hispanics Frown on Trump, but Not Rest of GOP Field,” is encouraging for Republicans. The actual survey results, less so.
At first glance, it looks good for Republicans:
But look at the Democrats:
That’s a rather stark advantage.
Now, granted, much of this is simply about name recognition:
Gallup began tracking the images of all the major announced candidates for president nightly in early July. Since then, 14% of the roughly 650 Hispanics interviewed have said they view Trump favorably, while 65% have viewed him unfavorably, yielding a net favorable score of -51. This separates Trump from the next-most-unpopular Republicans among Hispanics — Rick Perry (-7), Ted Cruz (-7) and Jim Gilmore (-6), who are viewed far less negatively.
Bush presents the greatest contrast to Trump. Bush’s average 34% favorable and 23% unfavorable ratings among Hispanics since July give him a +11 net favorable score — the highest of any GOP candidate. The net favorable scores of Marco Rubio (+5), Carly Fiorina (+3), George Pataki (+3), Scott Walker (+2) and Ben Carson (+2) all tilt slightly positive, although none of these candidates is nearly as well-known among Hispanics as Trump and Bush.
In terms of familiarity, only Trump and Bush are recognized by a majority of Hispanics. Eight in 10 have formed an opinion of Trump and about six in 10 of Bush. Familiarity dwindles to roughly 40% for Rubio and Cruz, both Cuban-Americans, as well as for Perry and Chris Christie, but drops well below that for all the others. (See the full ratings in the tables at the end.) [emphasis added]
Regardless, the odds-on Democratic favorite is doing much better:
On the Democratic side, only Hillary Clinton is a familiar figure to a substantial segment of U.S. Hispanics. As a result, she is the only one with a sizable net favorable score. Three-quarters of Hispanics have an opinion of Clinton. With 58% viewing her favorably and 18% unfavorably, she has a net +40 favorable score. This is remarkably similar to Clinton’s image among Hispanics in advance of the 2008 presidential primaries, in June 2007, when 63% viewed her favorably and 20% unfavorably.
Bernie Sanders is the next-most-recognized Democrat, known to 25% of Hispanics. Nearly as many view Sanders unfavorably as favorably, giving him a +5 net favorable score. The other Democrats — Jim Webb, Martin O’Malley and Lincoln Chafee — are each known to only 14% of Hispanics and, as a result, have even lower net favorable scores, ranging from +2 to -2.
The silver lining is that Bush is at least moving in the right direction:
Meanwhile, an interesting shift in Hispanics’ ratings of Bush has occurred. His net favorable rating among Hispanics jumped from +1 in July (based on 28% viewing him favorably and 27% unfavorably) to +22 in August (41% favorable, 19% unfavorable), a significant change at a time when no other candidate’s image has shown much movement. This could reflect Hispanics’ support for Bush’s more moderate tone on immigration — at least before he referred to the children of illegal immigrants as “anchor babies.” These figures will serve as a valuable baseline to see whether the ongoing criticism of Bush for using the term “anchor babies” hurts him in the Hispanic community.
Or, it may simply be a case that all most Hispanics knew about Bush a few months ago was that (1) he was a Republican and (2) his last name was “Bush.”
It’s not clear from the article how the question was phrased, exactly, so we may be seeing the tendency of people to rank things in relative order. The pollster asks something along the lines of, “I’m going to read you a list of names of Republican candidates and for each I’ll ask you whether, etc…” So Bush ends up being judged by contrast with Trump. Imagine a pollster saying, “I’m going to read a list of murderous tyrants, Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini. . .” And surprise, Mussolini comes out with some favorables. In isolation Mussolini would do badly, but in contrast to Hitler he looks good. And yet Mussolini still wouldn’t get any votes.
I think it’s more likely that at least some of the Hispanics surveyed come from Florida or Texas and know that Jeb’s wife is Hispanic. That would tend to argue that he is less likely to be prejudiced against them so they view him more favorably than the rest of the GOP field.
And then he started talking about “anchor babies”.
So Hispanics have a negative impression of someone who describes them as parasites, rapists and murderers and openly talks about a gigantic ethnic cleansing.
How odd.
CNN had a guy from Univision, the Spanish language channel, on yesterday. He didn’t have anything good to say about Trump.
It occurred to me that there’s an entire strain of commentary happening in this country that English-speakers are hardly even aware of. It doesn’t show up on the Sunday shows, doesn’t have columns in the NY Times or the Wash Post.
But it does show up occasionally in polls such as this.
@James Pearce: I’ve been wondering about how to get Univision with english subtitles.
In Trump’s world illegal immigrants can’t vote for you. Work for you, yes, but vote, no. So screw them.
The joke just keeps getting darker, doesn’t it.
I’ll hazard a guess that racial and religious minorities other than Hispanics react negatively to Trump’s message. I’ve yet to find a Jewish commentator who backs Trump, and my guess is that Asian-Americans and African-Americans feel the same way. If you Google “How many Americans are … ” you get 2% Jewish, 5% Asian, 14% African-American, and 17% Hispanic. That’s 38%, and the percentage will inch up a little in the next year as Puerto Ricans move to Florida (see http://tinyurl.com/opbnske). I wonder if Trump will do for the US as a whole what Pete Wilson did for California back in the 90’s.
Stan,
Great point. I’m not sure the republican party understands just how bad this is for them. Like Jorge Ramos said on CNN, for Hispanics, this isn’t politics, it’s personal. And with republican leaders like Peter King and Reince Priebus, to mention just two, talking Trump up, the rot is spreading fast..
@Stan: in the long and very interesting New Yorker piece on Trump and white identity politics (too lazy to get a link, but definitely worth a read) the author mentions Asian Americans abandoning Romney for his self deportation talks. I assume Trumps comments will have a similar effect.
@Stan: I of course agree with the point of your comment regarding Pete Wilson’s endorsement of prop 187 and it’s effect on Hispanic voting. But you might not realize that in the RWNJ community the theory of Dem dominance in CA is that it is due to ‘amnesty’ that allowed all those brown people who talk funny to vote. That’s the rationale for their opposition to ‘amnesty’ (ie–comprehensive immigration reform) at present.
The things you learn reading red-state!
@michael reynolds: That doesn’t make sense if you look at the linked results.
What stands out to me, aside from the Trump number, is how low the level of familiarity is among those surveyed.
@Dave D: I’m too lazy to search for a link, but do people realize that this “self deportation” thing started as a joke by an Hispanic comic?
@Barry:
I guess the telenovelas have English subtitles….some of their soccer coverage, too. Excuse me, futbol.
@Pinky:
What do you think that means?
(Me, I think it’s an indicator just how uninterested the GOP is in courting Spanish-speaking voters. Curious for your take.)
@cian: The rot has been there for a long time; the light is getting broader in scope and revealing more of it.
you have to wonder what they “like” about one of the most unlikable people on the planet? i mean really,do they have a clue about her policies or do they think she’s her husband? or do they think that democrats will somehow throw more freebies their way? it’s not like they can compare what a democracy is let alone our version of it so sure- hillary….
@James Pearce: I hadn’t thought about it much. It looks like this poll’s pool wasn’t limited to likely voters. Most of, maybe all of, the similar polls I’ve seen filter out those who are unlikely to vote. So it’s probably unfair to compare familiarity among likely D’s or R’s to familiarity among all Hispanics. I suspect that the all Hispanics familiarities are similar to the all all races familiarities.
Since nearly every candidate’s favorability is within or near the stated margin of error, it’s likely that this survey doesn’t tell us anything about any of the candidates but Bush, Clinton, and Trump.
@Pinky:
It’s not measuring likely votes, so limiting it to “likely voters” would serve no purpose.
That -51 for Trump doesn’t tell us anything?
I was actually hoping for something else. I mean, sure…question the integrity of the poll. You can do that with any poll really. It’s a poll. It’s not biblical truth.
But if you leave aside the inherent unreliability of polling and accept there is still some useful information in there, what do you think accounts for the Republicans’ low rating among Hispanics?
@James Pearce:
But every other poll I’ve seen that does familiarity and favorability does limit itself to likely voters.
I specifically said that it did. OK, I phrased it badly, though. I said “it’s likely that this survey doesn’t tell us anything about any of the candidates but Bush, Clinton, and Trump”. I could have said that it doesn’t tell us anything about the familiarity and favorability of any of the candidates but Bush, Clinton, and Trump – but that was an awkwardly long sentence.
The survey didn’t measure that.
@James Pearce: I said “The survey didn’t measure that”, referring to Republicans’ low ranking among Hispanics. Note the headline of the Gallup article: