The latest Field poll in California shows precisely how big of an impact the Latino vote is having on the California gubernatorial election. Republican Candidate Meg Whitman had made a much more substantial effort to woo Latino voters than Democrat Jerry Brown -- Brown didn't even have a Spanish-language website in early July -- but in the aftermath of scandal in which Whitman, an immigration hawk calling for harsher penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants was revealed to have employed one herself, the Latino vote is going massively for Brown.
The Field poll released on Sept. 23, about a week before Whitman's former housekeeper Nicky Diaz Santillan came forward, showed Whitman and Brown tied 41-41, because they were essentially splitting the Hispanic vote:
White non-Hispanics, who comprise 72% of likely voters in this election, are favoring Whitman over Brown by four points (44% to 40%). Latinos, another traditionally Democratic-voting constituency who account for 15% of this year's likely voters, are only slightly favoring Brown (43% to 40%). All other ethnic voters, including African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Native-Americans, account for another 13% of the vote and they are favoring Brown by twenty-two points (48% to 26%), although many (26%) are undecided.
In the latest poll heading into November, Brown has a 10-point lead, 49-39, getting only a little more of the white vote than before:
Among white non-Hispanics, who comprise 71% of the vote, it is Brown 45% and Whitman 44%. Brown has a greater than two-to-one lead among Latinos (57% to 27%) and is also heavily favored by African-Americans (80% to 9%).
Obviously, the fact that Brown is now tying Whitman among white voters matters a great deal since they make up a larger share of the electorate, but Whitman lost 13 points among Latinos in the last month. That, I suppose, explains Whitman's last-minute fudging of her position on Arizona's draconian immigration law. At least in California, alienating Latinos has had disastrous consequences for the Republican candidate.
Since Brown seems likely to win, it seems like an opportune time to remind everyone why he might not be a very good governor.
