GOP has much on the line with Latino voters, survey says

Latino voters are overwhelmingly expected to blame the GOP if immigration reform stalls in Congress, according to a new polling report from Latino Decisions.

If that occurs the experts at the political research firm said the voting block could turn away from the GOP nationally as California’s Latino voters did after the controversial Proposition 187 in the early 1990s.

The initiative, approved by voters, sought to strip unauthorized immigrants in the state of various benefits including healthcare and education. The measure was largely overturned in court.

The report is titled “The Prop. 187 Effect.” It outlines the similarities between the current immigration environment and the Latino response to Proposition 187 years ago.

Co-founder of Latino Decisions Matt Barreto said the GOP has an opportunity to learn from what happened in the state two decades ago before losing the entire Latino electorate for years to come. Barreto is also a professor at the University of Washington.

Why is this issue so critical?

More than half of Latino voters polled by Latin Decisions over the summer said they know an unauthorized immigrant and a third have an unauthorized family member.

“If Republicans position themselves as an anti-immigrant party, the next generation of Latino voters will find themselves aligned against the GOP in 2014, in 2024 and perhaps another decade after that,” according to the report.

The GOP does have an opportunity to turn things around, the report outlines. Among Latino voters, 62 percent said they would view the party more favorably if the House allows a vote on comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship.

The study uses California as an example of how the electorate went from a strong Republican stronghold to overwhelmingly Democrat. Experts point to Proposition 187 and the aftermath as the beginning of the transformation as Latinos registered to vote in droves and applied for citizenship so they could vote in the Golden State.

Gary Segura, co-founder of the firm and professor at Stanford University, said the political parties must pay attention to the 65,000 Latino citizens who come of age each month. Almost all Latinos under the age of 18 are U.S. citizens, according to the data.

“The path to electoral recovery is in trying to appeal to Latino voters who are here,” Segura said. “The Latino vote is more swing than any other vote.”