The GOP and the Immigrants

The toughest nut the Minnesota GOP has to crack is the urban vote - controlled in the inner city by afro, latino and asian voters. These voters traditionally vote Democrat nationwide, and DFL locally.

The National Review's Daniel T. Griswold has an excellent article on how the old saws about immigrant voters, like those about voter turnout, may not hold up to scrutiny, especially scrutiny at the polls. One of several reasons he cites:

Hispanics are "up for grabs" politically. Despite their Democratic leanings, they are not monolithic the way black voters unfortunately are. At the presidential level, for example, the share of Hispanics voting Republican swelled from 21 percent for Bob Dole in 1996 to 35 percent for George Bush in 2000. And a recent poll showed that Hispanics would vote 50-35 for Bush over Democrat Al Gore if an election were held today. Many Hispanics are socially conservative with a strong work ethic — Hispanic men have a high labor-force participation rate — and propensity for home ownership. A sympathetic Republican candidate who respects immigrants can woo a sizeable chunk of Hispanics along with other swing voters.

That's Hispanics. The Asians, who are currently a solidly DFL bloc, are equally rabid about small busines - a tradtional GOP strength. The Asian vote is largely habitual in St. Paul - DFL reps were instrumental in bringning many of our Hmong citizens to the US.

If a sympathetic GOP candidate could convince these immigrants - as socially and fiscally conservative as they already are - that the GOP was the party with their best interests at heart, who knows what could happen?

Posted by Mitch at November 20, 2002 10:41 PM