CO-Project New America/Keating Research (D): Obama up 4

[tpfkaw]

What were the 2010 exit polls like for Colorado? Would there be any reason why Democrats would do worse in Colorado than they did in 2010?

CO-Gov was D-33, R-27, and I-40, although indies voted 59% for Tancredo and Maes to 39% for Hickenlooper so we can assume many of them were disgruntled Rs.

The divisive Senate primary and non-competitive governor's race might've depressed Republican turnout, if one is making the case it'll be relatively higher in 2012 than 2010 (I'd personally doubt that, though).

[tpfkaw]

Are we talking about illegal immigrants voting?  How often do you think that happens, percentage-wise?  Just curious.

Los Angeles Times poll of registered voters has 41% of California Latinos admitting to being born in a different country.  These results are quite stable from poll to poll.  It's within the realm of possibility that they're just confused but then you'd have news stories every election about millions of illegal immigrants being turned away at the California polls.  Saying they must've come through legal channels just insults our intelligence.

Edit:  Also, a common Democratic "voter suppression" complaint is that Republicans supposedly make Spanish-language robocalls saying that illegal immigrants are subject to deportation if they vote.  This is, of course, an implicit admission that illegal immigrants do vote.  If such a thing actually is occuring, it also indicates that Republicans consider it a genuine concern and it isn't just something they made up.

[tpfkaw]

Are we talking about illegal immigrants voting?  How often do you think that happens, percentage-wise?  Just curious.

Los Angeles Times poll of registered voters has 41% of California Latinos admitting to being born in a different country.  These results are quite stable from poll to poll.  It's within the realm of possibility that they're just confused but then you'd have news stories every election about millions of illegal immigrants being turned away at the California polls.  Saying they must've come through legal channels just insults our intelligence.

Naturalized citizens can vote wormy. What the hell are you talking about?

The number of Mexicans in the entire country (not just California) who became naturalized citizens in the period 2002-2010 is 889,929 according to the Department of Homeland Security.  According to exit polls, Latinos were 22% of the California electorate in 2010, or about 2.2 million voters.  41% of them is over 900,000 votes.  It is not possible that illegal immigrants are not voting in large numbers in California.

[tpfkaw]

Why restrict it to those who were naturalized from 2002-2010? Why not look at everyone naturalized since 1970 or 1980? The vast majority of them would still be voting. Indeed they would be voting in much higher numbers than those who are recently naturalized.

Because I don't have that data available and the number of Mexicans naturalized in the state of California prior to 2002 is pretty negligable.  In any case the we can probably assume that the total number of Mexicans who came to *the entire US* during the largest 9 years for Mexican immigration in history is probably greater than Mexican immigration to California since 1980 or even 1970, especially when you consider many of that number are non-voters.

[tpfkaw]

But, since facts and figures are key, if we assume the proportion of naturalized Mexicans naturalized in California in 2011 (39% of the total) holds true for previous years, and estimate that Mexican naturalizations since 1970 were at the same average rate as between 2002 and 2010, minus the outlier year of 2008 (almost certainly an overestimate), then there were about 1.37 million Mexicans naturalized in California from 1970 to 2010.  Assuming 20% died, moved out of California, are not registered voters, or are too young to vote (almost certainly an underestimate), and 60% of the rest turned out (almost certainly an overestimate), that gets us to 660,000 votes - 250,000 still unaccounted for.