Amid angst over illegal immigration, President Barack Obama is losing support among Hispanic voters, complicating his re-election chances in Florida, a new Quinnipiac Poll shows.
Obama carried the Sunshine State in 2008 with the help of Hispanics, but that support is softening here and elsewhere.
A national Quinnipiac poll conducted Nov. 14-20 shows the president's approval/disapproval rating among Hispanics has dropped to 56-43. Obama won 67 percent of the U.S. Latino vote in 2008.
In Florida, other polls have shown Obama's Hispanic support as high as 82 percent in 2009, and as low as 49 percent recently. He won 57 percent of the state's Latino vote against John McCain in 2008. (Quinnipiac did not break out Florida-specific results in its national survey of 2,552 registered voters.)
"The mainstream punditry has long treated as a fait accompli that the Hispanic vote in the 2012 election is safely in Obama's corner and will, as in 2008, likely tip the balance in swing states like Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, perhaps even Florida. But this looks extremely doubtful," says Stephen Steinlight, an analyst with the conservative Center for Immigration Studies.
"Obama is an enormous disappointment to Hispanics to whom he promised passage of 'comprehensive immigration reform' but couldn't even deliver the DREAM Act. Nor are all Hispanics buying the rationale that this failure is wholly attributable to Republican obstructionism," Steinlight explained.
Mario Lopez, head of the Washington, D.C.-based Hispanic Leadership Fund, agrees with Steinlight ... up to a point.
"Obama has run opposite of what he said he would do [on immigration]. There have been record numbers of deportations on his watch," Lopez said.
"But that won't automatically translate into Republican support," he cautioned.
As with the general electorate, Hispanics, whose unemployment rate runs 2 points above the national average, are concerned about the economy -- and blame is rubbing off on the White House.
The Quinnipiac poll showed 74 percent of Hispanics are "somewhat dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" with the direction the country is going in today. Fifty-three percent of Hispanic voters said they held an "unfavorable" view of the Democratic Party.
Yet national Republicans fared just as poorly, and few conservatives are counting on a big Hispanic shift in their direction. READ MORE
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