[Crazykz]

LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...,5308121.story

Latino voters, who have helped to propel California's leftward political swing over recent years, remain reluctant to embrace Republican candidates as the November general election nears, a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll has shown.

...

Latino views are keenly watched by political candidates and campaigns because of the state's demographic march. A 2009 study by the Field Poll found that white voters had declined from 83% to 65% of the electorate in the previous three decades. At the same time, the percentage of Latino voters had almost tripled, to 21%.

...

Overall, while white voters gave Brown a net unfavorable rating, by a 47%-42% margin, Latino voters gave Brown a favorable rating, 34% to 26%. Whites (48% to 36%) and Latinos (34% to 22%) both gave Whitman a net unfavorable rating In both the races for governor and Senate, Latino voters were more likely than whites to say they did not yet know enough about the candidates to form an opinion. Because they constitute smaller percentages of voters, the views of African American and Asian voters could not be compared in a statistically meaningful way.

Democratic strategists have hoped that Whitman's courtship of Latinos would be blunted by the GOP primary, during which challenger Steve Poizner engaged her in a dispute over illegal immigration. Trying to stave off abandonment by conservatives, Whitman aired an advertisement in which her campaign chairman, Pete Wilson, said that she would be "tough as nails" on illegal immigrants. Wilson, the former governor, is still derided by many Latinos for his support of Proposition 187 in 1994.

The poll did not directly test the effect of their immigration stances on Whitman and Fiorina, but the results on other questions suggested the issue is significant. In both races, Latinos gave Democrats an advantage in handling immigration by at least 20 points, higher than for all other issues except healthcare. (On that issue, asked only of the Senate candidates, Boxer held the edge over Fiorina by 31 points among Latinos.)

"The Latino voters are being motivated by multiple issues, but immigration is certainly one," Pastor said, also citing healthcare and the environment.