What Do Latinos Think About Whitman After Housekeeper-Gate?

The day after Meg Whitman said that people who hire undocumented immigrants should be held accountable, a woman named Nicandra Diaz-Santillan came forward claiming to be her former housekeeper. She accused Whitman of knowingly employing an undocumented immigrant in her home for nine years. 

Whitman denied the allegations, saying she fired Diaz-Santillan as soon as she found out the housekeeper was undocumented. 

It’s the latest twist in Whitman's campaign to be the next governor of California, and it has political observers wondering how the news will affect her standing among Latino voters. The trouble is, where Latino voters stand on Whitman isn't exactly clear.

A poll released Thursday by the Public Policy Institute of California finds that Democrat Jerry Brown is leading his Republican opponent by 7 percentage points among Latino voters. 

Two polls released last week presented two very different pictures: The Field Poll found Brown leading Whitman by just 3 percentage points among likely Latino voters, while an L.A. Times/USC poll by Latino Decisions found that Brown’s lead among the same group of voters was as much as 26 points.

Latinos have become some of the state's most sought-after voters, representing about one-fifth of California’s electorate. Whitman and Brown will even face off Saturday in a debate at California State University's Fresno campus, to be hosted by Univision and broadcast in Spanish—a first for a gubernatorial debate in the state.

But the wide variation in recent poll numbers has some political observers unsure about what they can expect from Latino voters in November.

“Both our survey and the LAT/USC survey were based on relatively small samples,” says Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll. “Ours included 97 Latino likely voters, while the LAT/USC Poll included 209 Latino likely voters. Thus, the corresponding sampling errors of each poll are quite large.”

"There is considerable room for overlap between these two poll estimates," DiCamillo adds. "My advice from a statistical standpoint would be that the ‘true’ population value of Latino preferences in the governor's race falls somewhat in between these two estimates.”

The difference in the polling data may also reflect an inherent fallibility when it comes to predicting the so-called “Latino vote”—a term that includes both third-generation Californians and first-generation immigrants from Mexico to Argentina.

“It’s definitely a more diverse minority group,” admits Dr. Matt Barreto, a pollster with Latino Decisions and a political science professor at the University of Washington. “But we find very consistently that there’s a strong majority that identify as Latino, that have a shared experience with other Latinos in the U.S., and that’s especially pronounced in the wake of the [anti-illegal immigration] Arizona law … because when they pull you over, they don’t ask what generation you are.”

As a Republican in California, Whitman is going up against an anti-immigrant image the GOP has earned among Latinos that goes back to Prop. 187 in 1994.

“Most Latino voters have not forgiven the Republican Party for Prop. 187,” says Fernand Amandi, managing partner with Hispanic polling agency Bendixen & Amandi in Miami. “That feeling has been underscored in the last couple of years, that the Republican Party is not a friend of the Latino community in California.”

Prop. 187, introduced by Pete Wilson, aimed to ban undocumented immigrants from accessing social services. Instead, it sparked a backlash among Latino voters, which has been largely credited with a series of Democratic wins in the state. Wilson is now working behind the scenes as Whitman’s campaign chairman.