NDN releases new report on the Hispanic Electorate - "Hispanics Rising"

For 5 years the NDN community has been telling a simple but important story - that the very rapid growth of the Hispanic community was creating a very new and powerful dynamic in the American electorate.

In our new report, Hispanics Rising, NDN reviews the emerging politics of the fastest-growing part of the American electorate, one deeply changed by the immigration debate. The report documents how Hispanics have gone from a group trending Republican to a group overwhelmingly Democratic; one whose percentage of the American electorate has increased by 33 percent in the last 4 years; and one poised, because of the structure of the Electoral College, to determine who the next President will be in 2008.

Writing in the Washington Post yesterday, former Bush Chief White House Speechwriter Michael Gerson described the changes in the Hispanic electorate this way:

I have never seen an issue where the short-term interests of Republican presidential candidates in the primaries were more starkly at odds with the long-term interests of the party itself. At least five swing states that Bush carried in 2004 are rich in Hispanic voters -- Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Bush won Nevada by just over 20,000 votes. A substantial shift of Hispanic voters toward the Democrats in these states could make the national political map unwinnable for Republicans … Some in the party seem pleased. They should be terrified.

See additional stories about these developments here and here.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.