Hispanic voters prefer Barack Obama to John McCain by 66 percent to 23 percent, according to a nationwide survey of 2,015 Latinos released today by the Pew Hispanic Center. Hispanic voters say that education, the cost of living, jobs and health care are the issues most important to them, and they prefer Obama on those issues by as much as three to one.

 

Although Latino support for Democratic candidates had been in a decline from 1999 until 2006, the past two years have seen a reversal of that trend. According to the survey, Hispanic support of Democrats is now 16 points higher than it was in 2006. Following a movement that can also be seen in the general population, dissatisfaction with the direction the country is heading, and concern about pocketbook and family issues, has led more Hispanic voters (now 65 percent) to identify with the Democratic party.

 

In the Democratic primary elections, Hispanic voters preferred Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama by a margin of two-to-one, but this survey shows that 77 percent of Latinos who voted for Clinton in the primary now say they would vote for Obama, or are leaning that way. Among former Clinton supporters, more Hispanics than whites have moved to support Obama; only 70 percent of non-Hispanic whites who voted for Clinton are now behind Obama.

 

Obama’s overall favorability rating among Latinos is similar to Clinton’s, about 75 percent. McCain’s is much lower—34 percent—but he is still more popular than Bush, whose favorability is only 27 percent.

 

While there has been some speculation that Obama’s race might hurt him among Latinos, this survey showed that a majority of Hispanics believe that race will make no difference in their vote. However, when asked whether a candidate’s race might help or hurt him generally, nearly three times as many voters said Obama being black would help him with Hispanic voters, compared to 11 percent who said it would hurt. Twice as many voters said McCain being white would hurt him, versus 12 percent who said it would help.

 

The Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, is a non-partisan, non-advocacy research organization based in Washington, D.C. and is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

 

The 2008 National Survey of Latinos was conducted from June 9 through July 13, 2008 among a randomly selected, nationally representative sample of 2,015 Hispanic adults, 892 of whom report that they are U.S. citizens and registered to vote. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points; for registered voters, 4.4 percentage points.