You don't win Latino voters with Spanish surnames—we're just not that shallow
There is a disturbing—and insulting—bipartisan trend among non-Latinos to assume that a Spanish surname is enough to garner Latino support. Among Republicans, that manifests in the fetishization of almost exclusively Cuban-American Latinos. Yet for several reasons, that has little impact on their ability to attract brown support.
For example, check the latest Quinnipiac University poll:
| AMONG LATINOS | |
|---|---|
| CLINTON | 69 |
| rubio | 18 |
| CLINTON | 72 |
| Cruz | 17 |
Bernie Sanders does just as well against Rubio and Cruz among Latinos, which shows that Clinton’s advantages have little to do with her dominant name recognition. Fact is, Latinos fucking hate Republicans, and slapping a Spanish surname on a candidate doesn’t change that fact. In fact, that Spanish surname only buys them a handful of points over the rest of the overtly xenophobic GOP field:
| AMONG LATINOS | |
|---|---|
| CLINTON | 76 |
| Trump | 13 |
| CLINTON | 74 |
| Carson | 15 |
And even those “improved” Latino numbers are a steep drop-off from traditional GOP performance with this demographic: Mitt Romney managed to win 27 percent of Latinos. The desperate GOP gambit to out-Trump Trump is proving absolutely devastating to the GOP’s short-, mid- and long-term chances. General Latino resentment over the preferential immigration treatment of Cubans only exacerbates that hostility.
But it’s not just Republicans making this mistake ...