FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 22, 2003

Split on Bush Among Latino Voters
Latinos are wide open vis-à-vis Democratic Primary Candidates

Los Angeles, California - Latino support for President Bush has declined significantly over the last year according to a new survey commissioned by the William C. Velasquez Institute. "Today, Latinos are split regarding approval of Mr. Bush's job performance with 50% regarding his tenure as good or excellent compared to 48% saying not so good or poor, this represents an alarming trend for the President when compared to last year when our September 2002 survey showed that Latinos strongly approved of Mr. Bush's job performance," said WCVI president Antonio Gonzalez.

Underlying this steep decline is sharp disapproval of aspects of Mr. Bush's tenure. "When asked to rate the President's performance on the economy, Latinos are soundly critical of the President by 64% to 34%," Gonzalez continued.

Latinos also criticized Mr. Bush's performance on serving the Hispanic community by 54% to 37% and the War on Iraq by 54% to 42%. "Mr. Bush is hurting among Latinos on domestic policy questions like jobs and Latino-specific themes like immigration," continued Gonzalez.

"Though the President fares slightly better on foreign policy questions, his war policy is suffering from significant erosion as Latinos have switched from war supporters on the eve of the Iraq invasion in September 2002 by a 61% to 32% margin, to critics of his handling of the occupation in October 2003 by a margin of 42% believing Bush's handling of the war is good/excellent to 54% believing his handling of the war is not so good/poor," analyzed Gonzalez.

As a result, Latinos have reversed course and are strongly inclined towards the Democrats entering the 2004 election season. "If the election were held today, any Democrat would beat President Bush among the nation's eight million Latino registered voters today by nearly 2-1 or 55% to 28%, though this can be expected to shift again once a Democratic nominee is apparent," remarked Gonzalez.

However, no Democratic primary hopeful has caught fire with Latinos. Fully 58% are undecided. "This indecision is greater than among non-Latino voters and reflects the fact that Latinos tend not to be concentrated in the early primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa. It may means that the Latino vote is up for grabs among Democratic hopefuls. A well conceived Latino strategy could help lift one of these contenders above the rest in the Latino-oriented states' primaries which begin in early February with New Mexico and Arizona and then run through mid-March with California, New York, Florida, Texas and Illinois," concluded Gonzalez.

WCVI, chartered in 1985, is a nonpartisan, non-profit, Latino-oriented research and policy think tank with offices in San Antonio and Los Angeles. More information on the survey can be obtained at www.wcvi.org.

The MirRam Group of New York, a nationally recognized, Latino-owned market research firm conducted the survey for WCVI from September 24 through October 2nd. Latino registered voters in the five major Latino-concentration states: California, Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois were contacted. These five states represent 80% of all Latino registered voters. Bilingual pollsters gathered interviews from a sample of Spanish-surnamed voters. The margin of error at 95% confidence level on a sample of 1060 = +/-3%. The MirRam Group and WCVI have partnered to do survey research since 2002.

For More of The Poll Click Here