A Killer Data Point For Obama In The Latest PPIC Poll

(also at Calitics)

The latest PPIC poll, a pretty decent one in California, has Barack Obama leading John McCain by 17 points, 54-37. It's a large sample size including 2003 Californians and 1086 likely voters, so it's a fairly robust poll amongst age groups and ethnicities. And if this data point is correct, Barack Obama looks VERY strong for November.

According to the poll, Obama leads McCain among Hispanics 69-20.

That's a "game over" type of number if it holds.

Cast your memory back to the February primaries, and you may remember that Obama's problem area was not white working-class voters, as they have been so eloquently called, but Hispanics. Much ink was spilled over how Obama couldn't connect with them, how there was all this antipathy between the black and brown communities, and it did manifest itself in the voting, at least in California. Hillary Clinton cleaned up in the heavily Hispanic areas in Southern California. In fact, it made up very nearly all of her delegate and popular vote win in the state. She had the backing of the Latino establishment and worked them extremely hard to get out the vote, which they did in big numbers.

I don't think anybody expected Obama to rebound among these voters this strongly, this soon. But his favorables among Hispanics are right in line with his share of the vote over McCain, at 69%.

It's one poll and it's one data point. But extrapolate it out. The legendary figure is that Hispanics voted 44% for Bush in 2004. That's probably not true - it was probably around 39%. However, that's substantially larger than 20% - and remember that Bush only won by 3 points, and Hispanic voters may be a slightly higher share of the electorate this year.

Again, it's one point in one poll, but if California's Hispanics voted at similar rates to the rest of the country's, then Colorado would be done, New Mexico would be done, Nevada would be close to done, Arizona would be in play, Texas would be in play, North Carolina and Georgia (with growing Hispanic regions) would be in play... you get the picture. Rove's "permanent Republican majority" relied on chipping away at a chunk of Hispanic voters while maintaining the white vote and building the coalition. The fearmongering and demagoguery over immigration reform, even though McCain nominally supported it (until the primary), has tarnished the Republican brand significantly among this subgroup. There's no other explanation for these numbers.

If John McCain gets 20-25% of the Hispanic vote he can't win the election. The highest that Kerry ever polled among Hispanics was 59-31. This is ten points below what Obama's polling in California. This is a bigger lead than Democrats had in 2006 among Hispanics.

I think it's kind of a big deal.

This also calls into question the handwringing about other groups supporting Obama, much of it based on faulty data. If Hispanics came over this quickly, I don't think Obama will have problems with other communities, either.