So, yet again, the New York Times has decided that Arizona is set to become one of our nation’s electoral battleground states, with helpful commentary from Arizona State University’s Bruce Merrill, David Berman and Joseph Garcia of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy.
Interestingly, the article provides a voter analysis of the state, county-by-county, making note of demographics such as ethnic and religious makeup. But the meat of the article comes from its bottom line (helpfully notated with a “Bottom Line” sub-headline), which we’ve excerpted in part here:
Of course, Mr. Romney is a 98 percent favorite in Arizona, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. But the days when Republicans can count on carrying the Grand Canyon State may be numbered.
More and more voters are registering as independents. The number of unaffiliated voters has surpassed the number of registered Democrats and is soon expected to overtake the number of Republicans, Mr. Berman said. The ideological middle of Arizona’s electorate may also gain more sway if voters pass Proposition 121, an initiative on the November ballot that would replace the current party primaries with one primary open to all voters. In the open primary system, the top two finishers advance to the general election regardless of party.
But the most powerful potential factor pushing Arizona to the political center remains the state’s Latino population and the prospect that Latino turnout rates will rise. Even with depressed turnout, Hispanics doubled as a share of the electorate to 16 percent in the 2008 presidential election from 8 percent in 1992.
As in Texas, it’s long been predicted that this is the year Arizona Latinos will really go to the polls.
“Everyone’s been waiting for Latinos to flex their political muscle,” Mr. Garcia said.
Mr. Merrill added, “I’ve been here 40 years, and it hasn’t happened so far.”
For the rest, including an assessment of the Flake/Carmona race, check out the Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog here.
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2012.
Latinos will vote, no doubt. This Latino voted absentee and voted for Romney.
I hope that many others with Mexican heritage, such as mine, and Latinos of other origins will see the future for us lies in restoring economic liberty. Romney will do this, while Obama will only double his efforts to destroy this one thing – unfettered capitalism – which can and will lift us all into the true “American Dream” and sustain it.
Latinos will overwhelmingly vote against the policies of self-deportation and random police checks. They will vote for Obama and Carmona.
Bisbee boy, please Google “unfettered capitalism,” read, enlighten yourself.
We can have capitalism without the 1% being the ruling class and the rest of us free to pursue the American Dream.
Pro tip: the economy is 2/3 consumption. A strong economy comes from working Americans being able to spend money. We had this for 30 years after WWII and we won’t get back with Romney.
What is clear is that President Obama’s pathway to victory is straight and narrow; he has a variety of different paths along which he can walk to victory against an electoral arithmetic nightmare for Governor Romney (see my thoughts: http://goo.gl/FsfQv). It would take a monument upset in Obama’s campaign, or a significant upturn in Romney’s, for the Republicans to retake the presidency; it would be a taste of revenge for the Democrats if Romney were denied the White House in a similar manner to Gore in 2000.