The Nevada Debate and Caucus: background on the Southwest, Immigration and Hispanics

Michael Gerson said it best in his Washington Post column:

I have never seen an issue [immigration] 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.

Tonight's Democratic Presidential debate in Las Vegas draws attention to a state and region of the country that will play a very large role in deciding the next President of the United States.

In each of the last 4 Presidential elections Democrats have won 19 states totaling 248 Electoral College votes of the 270 needed to win. In the last two elections Democrats have lost the Presidency by a small margin in a single state - Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000. In each of these two elections the President Bush won a very high percentage of Hispanic voters, making the 5 swing Presidential states with large Hispanic populations - AZ, CO, FL, NM and NV - much more Republican. In 2004 President Bush won them all, and relied on this Hispanic regional strategy to secure his narrow victory. (See NDN's recent report, Hispanics Rising, and our new article we've just published in Mother Jones for maps detailing all this).

But in 2005, despite the clear and evident success of the Bush Hispanic strategy, the Republicans rejected this approach, instead replacing it one that demonized immigrants - call it the Romney/Tancredo approach. In 2006 the House GOP blocked bi-partisan efforts to pass immigration reform. In 2007 it was the Senate Republicans who blocked a bi-partisan effort backed by the President himself. Throughout all this national Republicans and their allies used extra-ordinary language and images to describe Hispanic immigrants, and the result has been a reversal of GOP gains in this community, the fastest growing part of the American electorate. In the 2006 elections the GOP lost 20 points with Hispanics. Angered by the rhetoric, Hispanics also voted in very high numbers, increasing their share of the American electorate by 33% - from 6% of the national vote in 2002 to 8% in 2006.

All of this is why I've described the Republicans handling of the immigration issue a catastrophic event for their party (click here and here for our analysis of how the issue played in the 2007 and 2006 elections). They are replaying the same play Pete Wilson played in California in the 1990s, one that was instrumental in turning a state that birthed Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and turned it into one of the bluest and most progressive states in the country. If the current Hispanic trends continue, these five states - AZ, CO, FL, NM and NV - will almost certainly go the Democrats way in 2008. If that happens it becomes very hard to see how the GOP wins the Presidency, as they would have to win a major northern state they have not won since the 1980s. Possible of course, but not something they can count on, which is why Bush Republicans like Gerson, who understand how they won, are "terrified."

The strategic importance of this region drove the decision in 2005 by the DNC to change the decades-old Democratic Presidential nominating process, long dominated by Iowa and New Hampshire. Next year for the first time in many many years, a new state will go just after Iowa and it will not be New Hampshire. It will be Nevada.

So as you look at this debate tonight in this small state in the Southwest, think about how this state, this region, this community of Hispanic voters, and this issue of immigration may very well be the key to the Presidency in 2008.