Latino vote vital in Obama win

Barack Obama’s triumph in yesterday’s presidential election crossed racial, religious, and gender lines. The much sought-after Latino vote was critical to the Illinois senator’s win.

Exit polls indicated a clear majority opting for him by a near 2-to-1 margin with an “overwhelming” number of young Latinos supporting him according to one source. The myth that Latinos would shy away from an African-American candidate was not to be especially in battleground states like New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado.

The impact of the Latino vote was best felt in Florida- one of the key battleground states won by the Democratic candidate. “A huge influx of Central and South Americans in South Florida and a large Puerto Rican population in the Orlando area” along with a shifting Cuban-American electorate are cited as the reasons why 57% of Floridian Latino voters chose Obama.

Why did the Latino community opt for Obama rather than Republican candidate John McCain? Columnist Andes Oppenheimer explains:

My opinion: Hispanics voted Democratic primarily because they are among the hardest hit by the economy and by the Iraq War.

But, as we have reported repeatedly in this column over the past two years, Latinos have good grounds for resenting the Republican Party's growing anti-immigrant stance. Many Republicans in Congress -- not McCain -- in some cases have bordered on racism.

McCain has a history of goodwill toward Hispanics and had sponsored a comprehensive immigration bill that advocated both securing the border and giving an earned path to legalization to undocumented immigrants.

But as the election neared, he shifted toward a let's-first-secure-the-border rhetoric to woo his party's hard-line anti-immigration vote, and the Republican Party's campaign platform pretty much advocated the unconditional deportation of millions of undocumented workers.

Image- Jackson County Floridian (“A campaign worker for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., center, registers new citizens to vote after a naturalization ceremony in Miami Sept. 16, 2008.”)
Sources- miamiherald.com, csmonitor.com, Guardian UK, Reuters, cbs4.com, Dallas Morning News, CNN