Results of a recent survey of 1,000 Latino likely voters, led by CMC's Gast?n Espinosa, the Arthur V. Stoughton Associate Professor of Religious Studies, has found its way into the text of Bloomberg Businessweek. Jonathan D. Salant's Oct. 31, article, Obama Leads Romney by 1 Point in CBS/New York Times Poll, leads with the latter poll, showing the presidential race to be "virtually tied" in the final week of campaigning.
Salant's piece runs down the recent stats, then jumps into numbers released by Espinosa this week, which showed Latino Christian voters favoring Obama with a 63 percent to 26 percent lead over Romney, between Oct. 4-10. This finding and others are available in Espinosa and team's resulting Latino Religions and Politics Survey Report, including the possibility that Romney could win votes from social conservatives in key swing states on socially conservative issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and contraceptiveswhich perhaps helps to explain why Romney might win Florida, especially among Latino Catholics.
A record number of Latinos are expected to vote in the 2012 Presidential election. The Pew Hispanic Center reports there are 23.7 million eligible Latino voters 4 million more since 2008 and that they will make up 11 percent of the 2012 electorate and 14 percent of the electorate in the battleground states of Florida, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida, where Bush won the 2000 Election by only 537 votes.
Espinosa is the editor of Religion, Race, and Barack Obama's New Democratic Pluralism, and the Columbia University Press Series in Religion and Politics. In May, he participated in a White House briefing on Religion and the Common Good at Home and Abroad.
In 2000, he directed the Hispanic Churches in American Public Life national survey (n = 2,310) in collaboration with Harry Pachon and Rudy de la Garza of the Tom?s Rivera Institute. And in 2008, he directed the Latino Religions and Politics national survey (n = 1,104).