Last night, Nate Silver of the New York Times put forth this question as the title of his latest blog post — Did Polls Underestimate Democrats’ Latino Vote? – stating:
I riffed a little bit last night on why the public polls might have been wrong in Nevada; I speculated, for instance, that the fact that Mr. Reid is the sort of candidate whom one votes for unenthusiastically might have skewed the turnout models.
There is another theory, however, which was proposed to me last night by Matt Barreto of the polling firm Latino Decisions.
“There is one overarching reason why the polls were wrong in Nevada,” Mr. Barreto wrote in an e-mail to FiveThirtyEight. “The Latino vote.”
The Latino Decisions polling, which was sponsored by National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and America’s Voice, found that immigration issues were critical in driving Latino voters to the polls this election.
On a press call yesterday, Latino Decisions and experts in Latino civic participation and immigration reform gathered to analyze Latino voter turnout in the 2010 elections, assess what motivated Latinos to vote, and answer what Tuesday night’s results mean for the future of immigration reform and Latino political engagement. The call also featured a detailed analysis of election night polls in 8 states conducted by Latino Decisions that details how and why Latino citizens voted in eight states – AZ, CA, CO, FL IL, NM, NV, and TX.
