Education the top issue for Hispanic voters
Story By: Bea Karnes
Source: AP
Published Thu Jul 24, 2008, 02:22 PM MDT
Updated Thu Jul 24, 2008, 02:22 PM MDT
A new poll suggests Hispanic voters favor Barack Obama over John McCain by a wide margin.
The national poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center, finds 66 percent of Hispanic registered voters who were surveyed support Obama, compared to 23 percent for John McCain. The other 11 percent are undecided.
According to the poll, more than three-quarters of Latinos who voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primaries now say they are for Obama. Clinton had carried the Hispanic vote, an important Democratic constituency, by about a 2-to-1 margin.
Hispanics make up only about 9 percent of eligible voters, but could play an important role in four potential battleground states: Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.
Education, not immigration, was the most important issue cited by Hispanic voters in the Pew survey.
The telephone survey was conducted from June 9 - 13. The Pew Hispanic Center interviewed a nationally representative sample of 2,015 adult Hispanics, including 892 who said they were registered voters. The margin of sampling error for
registered voters was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
