Thursday, October 3, 2024

New Latino vote poll shows support for Obama, original DREAM Act

New Latino vote poll shows support for Obama, original DREAM Act

As both the Democrats and the Republicans continue to court the Latino vote, President Barack Obama continues to have a comfortable lead among Hispanic voters, according to a new national poll released Friday that gave him a 43-point margin.

The Latino Decisions survey of more than 600 registered Hispanics found that Obama had the support of 66 percent while 23 percent were either behind or leaning toward presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney. The results were almost exact to a Latino political opinion research leaders poll of Hispanic voters conducted with Univision News in November, with 67 percent behind Obama and 24 percent for Romney.

But this time, the poll also asked Latino respondents to compare both versions of the DREAM Act that aims to give immigrant youth with no legal status protected status while they are in college or university. The main difference between the two was explained to respondents An overwhelming majority — almost 90 percent — support the original bill as introduced by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, which allows the students to eventually become citizens. The other version, which has not been formally written but promoted publicly by Florida Senator Marco Rubio, would not put them on a path to citizenship and got only 13 percent of the support from Hispanic registered voters surveyed.

Latino Decisions will release more data from the survey, which was done between May 24 and June 4 and has a four percent margin of error, this week.

This article originally appeared on VOXXI.