Following both the RNC and DNC conventions, Obama holds a 37-point advantage over Romney among Latinos.
This is very good, but there is some disappointing news among the results of the latest Latino Decisions poll. First, enthusiasm among Latino voters actually went down following the conventions. Second, perceptions among Latinos regarding Democratic outreach to their concerns grew more pessimistic.
Further, after two weeks of national convention outreach, both parties have seen decreases in their favorability ratings. In week 1 of our tracking poll congressional Democrats registered 64% favorability and in week 3 they stand at 53% (however, Obama continues to perform better than congressional Democrats with 72% favorability). Likewise, when asked about how good or bad a job they were doing at outreach to Hispanics the Democrats fell from 59% approval in week 1 to 49% approval in week 3 following the DNC. The news for Republicans is far worse. GOP favorability among Latinos was 32% before either convention and is now just 26% (and Romney tracks quite similarly with 27% favorability). The percent rating Republicans positive on outreach actually increased, but from an anemic 14% to only 19% today who say Republicans are doing a good job reaching out to Hispanics.
So while Republicans are still doing significantly worse than Democrats on the outreach issue, I would have expected there to be a bump in both perceptions of outreach and overall favorability toward Democrats following the DNC convention specifically. Nevertheless, Obama is still crushing Romney among Latinos so that is definitely good news.
As I previously mentioned, enthusiasm among Latino voters has decreased over the past three polls. 54% of those polled stated they were very enthusiastic about voting in the 2012 election according to the August 27th poll, 51% of those polled were very enthusiastic about voting in the 2012 election according to the September 3rd poll, and just 49% of those polled are very enthusiastic about voting in the 2012 election in today's poll. That is disappointing and I felt certain that enthusiasm would go up in general, especially following the DNC convention.
In any case, Romney is still nowhere near his goal of 38% among the Latino/Hispanic/Chicano community and hopefully Obama is going to get more than 65% among Latinos.
Here is a link to the poll: http://www.latinodecisions.com/...