Clinton and the Hispanic factor

The emergence of racial politics in the contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ever since the New Hampshire campaign has been well documented in recent days. But what about racial tensions regarding the Hispanic vote? Might Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama to the White House not because white Americans won't vote for a black candidate, but because Hispanic Americans - now a larger minority in the US than African Americans - won't vote for a black man?

The Hispanic vote was key to Clinton's success in Nevada on Saturday and will again be critical when California and New York, both states with huge 'Latino' populations, hold their primaries on Super Tuesday (February 5).

Ryan Lizza, Washington correspondent for the New Yorker, concluded an article published in the January 21 issue, printed before Saturday's Nevada caucuses, by talking with Sergio Bendixen, a Clinton pollster who
specialises in the Hispanic vote. "In all honesty," said Bendixen, "the Hispanic vote is extremely important to the Clinton campaign and the polls have shown that even though she was slipping with women in Iowa and blacks in South Carolina, she was not slipping with Hispanics."

So why do Hispanics prefer Clinton to Obama? Bendixen said two key issues were Clinton's support for health care and Hispanic voters' affinity for the Clinton era. "It's one group where going back to the past really works," Bendixen said. "All you have to say in focus groups is 'Let's go back to the Nineties'."

And then he came up with a third reason - one that meant that the Clintons, long beloved in the black community, were now dependent on "a less edifying political dynamic", as Ryan Lizza put it. Bendixen told him: "The Hispanic voter - and I want to say this very carefully - has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates."

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 20, 2008