44 Percent of Hispanics Voted for Bush?

From the Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation:

In this edition of Public Opinion Watch:

(covering polls and related articles from the weeks of Nov. 15-21, 2004)

• Did Bush Really Get 44 Percent of the Hispanic Vote?
• Have the Republicans Really Achieved Parity on Party Identification?
• Does Bush Have a Mandate for His Conservative Agenda?

Did Bush Really Get 44 Percent of the Hispanic Vote?

I very strongly doubt it. This claim is based, first and foremost, on the finding in the National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll, the nation's largest and by far most influential, exit poll. But that finding, if carefully scrutinized, seems highly implausible for a variety of reasons. I lay these out below and conclude that a more reasonable estimate for Bush's Hispanic support this year is around 39 percent.

Start with the Texas state exit poll. That poll shows Bush with an astonishing 59 percent of the Hispanic vote. That's an increase of 16 points in Bush's support over 2000 and a shift in margin of 29 points (from an 11-point deficit to an 18-point lead).

The poll also claims that this mega-shift happened at the same time that Bush's support was being compressed among whites. Bush's support, the exit poll claims, dropped by a point among Texas whites compared to 2000, at the same time as Kerry's support among Texas whites rose by four points compared to Gore's. So Texas's favorite son runs for re-election and widens his margin among white voters practically everywhere – except Texas, where he loses ground! But among Hispanics in Texas, he gets a massive 29-point shift in his favor?

This pattern just doesn't make sense. But where the Texas poll makes the least sense of all is when you try to match them up with the county-level voting returns. If Bush was pulling over 70 percent of the white vote and almost 60 percent of the Hispanic vote, how on earth did he lose any counties in Texas? Consider these (racial composition figures based on voting age population):

Brooks county: 90 percent Hispanic, 10 percent white – 68 to 32 percent Kerry.

Dimmit county: 83 percent Hispanic, 16 percent white, 1 percent black – 66 to 33 percent Kerry

Duval county: 86 percent Hispanic, 13 percent white, 1 percent black – 71 to 28 percent Kerry

El Paso county: 75 percent Hispanic, 20 percent white, 3 percent black – 56 to 43 percent Kerry

Hidalgo county: 85 percent Hispanic, 14 percent white – 55 to 45 percent Kerry

Jim Wells county: 73 percent Hispanic, 23 percent white – 54 to 46 percent Kerry

Maverick county: 94 percent Hispanic, 4 percent white – 59 to 40 Kerry

Starr county: 97 percent Hispanic, 2 percent white – 74 percent to 26 percent Kerry

Webb county: 94 percent Hispanic, 6 percent white – 57 percent to 43 percent Kerry

My, my, where could those 59 percent Bush-voting Hispanics be hiding in the great state of Texas? Perhaps in the big urban areas such as Harris county (Houston)? Well, let's see, if we figure Hispanics are at least a sixth of Harris county voters (probably more, but let's be conservative), then, by themselves, they would push up Bush's margin, compared to 2000, by five points if they really voted for him at the 59 percent rate (and it should be even higher – to balance the apparently way-under-59 percent Hispanics in these other Texas counties). But wait! Bush's margin actually contracted in Harris county by a point. Maybe black voters (18 percent of the Harris county voting-age population) moved the needle back the other way? Seems unlikely if we believe the Texas exit poll: it says Bush improved his margin among black voters by 19 points in 2004!

That just deepens the mystery. To account for the slight shift away from Bush in Harris county, we would then have to assume that Harris county whites reduced their margin for Bush by 12 points or more in 2004.