Here is the first article that seriously looks at the actual size of the
Mexican-American voting bloc that the Bush Administration is so energetically
pursuing with its plans for legalizing Mexican illegal immigrants. I think
it's an important contribution to the current debate (although, I am, I
suppose, biased).

This article is copyrighted by United Press International. Please cite UPI
when quoting it. -- Steve Sailer

Analysis: Mexican-Americans and the vote
By STEVE SAILER, UPI National Correspondent
LOS ANGELES, July 24 (UPI) --
<A HREF="http://www.vny.com/cf/news/upidetail.cfm?QID=205385">
http://www.vny.com/cf/news/upidetail.cfm?QID=205385</A>

Pundits have been hailing as a "political masterstroke" the Bush
Administration's reported proposal to offer legalization to many, although
not all, illegal Mexican immigrants. (Democrats have countered by suggesting
programs should aid undocumented workers from all countries, not just
Mexico.) Yet, new data now available on the Census Bureau's website, although
not yet formally issued to the press, shows that the voting strength of
Mexican-Americans remains surprisingly limited. People identifying themselves
as being of Mexican ethnicity cast only 3.0 percent of the vote in the 2000
election.

In contrast, the Census Bureau found that African-Americans accounted for
11.5 percent of voters, making them almost four times as numerous as
Mexican-American voters. Even Hispanics with roots in countries other than
Mexico comprised 2.3 percent of the electorate, not much less than the
Mexican total.

Non-Hispanic whites dominated voting with 80.7 percent. Anglo whites cast
almost 27 times more ballots than did Mexican-Americans.

Although it's still small, the Mexican-American share has been growing
steadily. It's up from 2.6 percent in 1996. If recent trends continue, it
should reach somewhere around 3.5 percent by 2004.

Similarly, the total Hispanic grew from 3.6 in 1988 to 4.7 percent in 1996
to 5.4 percent in 2000. It likely will be about six percent or slightly
higher in 2004. The Voter News Service exit poll claimed that Hispanics
comprised seven percent of the 2000 vote, but that was based on a sample only
one quarter as large as the Census Bureau's.

The Census Bureau survey's main weakness is that respondents can falsely
claim they voted. Yet, this would only bias the results reported here if some
ethnic groups lied more than others. Exit polls, however, have a hard time
handling absentee voters.

Although in the long term, Mexican-Americans - and Hispanics in general -
are likely to wield massive influence, they probably will not play an
outsized role in the 2004 election - in particular, they are unlikely to
offer much aid to Bush's expected re-election bid.

Numerous commentators have uncritically repeated the claim made by Bush
pollster Matthew Dowd in The Washington Post that, "As a realistic goal, we
have to get somewhere between ... 38 to 40 percent of the Hispanic vote,"
compared to the estimated 35 percent Bush earned in 2000. Yet, simple math
shows that if Bush boosts his share of the Hispanic vote from 35 percent to
40 percent, and Hispanics cast six percent of the votes in 2004, then Bush
will gain a mere 0.3 percentage points overall.

"Obviously, all this is trivial compared to such things as the economy," one
left-of-center election analyst commented on condition of anonymity. "If I
were George W. Bush, I would just spend the next four years doing things for
Florida and Pennsylvania, rather than playing Hispanic games."

Further, the Electoral College, not the national popular vote, decides
presidential elections. (Otherwise, Al Gore would be President.) In 2004,
Mexican-American voters are likely to have even less influence there than in
the popular vote.

That's because 72.3 percent of Mexican-American voters in 2000 lived in just
two states: California and Texas. Neither one is expected to be up for grabs
in the next election.

Bush won his home state of Texas with 59.3 percent last year. He picked up
72 percent of Texas' white vote. If he were to need in 2004 a higher share
among Mexicans just to hold on to Texas, that's a sure sign he would be
doomed to lose nationwide.

In contrast, in California Bush took only 41.7 percent. Even if Bush had won
100 percent of the Mexican-American voters in California last November, he
still would have lost California by around 400,000 votes.

In the extremely close 2000 race, 12 states were decided by less than five
percentage points. Only seven percent of all Mexican-Americans voters lived
in those states. Mexican-Americans accounted for merely 0.8 percent of the
all the ballots cast in those 12 states.

Harry P. Pachon, head of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute in Claremont,
Calif., said, "The only countervailing facts are that in 23 of 50 states,
Latinos are now the largest minority." Pachon defended the political utility
of Bush's pro-Mexican-American push: "If 2004 is another squeaker, then it
makes a lot of sense." Pachon also pointed out that the U.S. House and Senate
are almost evenly balanced, and the Mexican-American vote could decide which
party controls them.

Where does this little-known data come from? Right after every national
election, the Census Bureau supplements its monthly Current Population Survey
of 50,000 households with additional questions about voting. Jennifer Day of
the Bureau said it is not planning to issue a press release on the 2000
election findings for another half year or so, but the actual data is
currently available to anyone willing to use FERRET (Federal Electronic
Research and Review Extraction Tool), a data query tool on the Census.gov
website.

This widespread assumption that policies benefiting Mexican-Americans are
crucial to Bush's reelection chances seems to have been fueled by the Census
Bureau's surprising announcement in March that Hispanics had overtaken
African-Americans in numbers, and now comprise exactly one out of eight
residents (12.5 percent).

Yet, only one out of 33 voters was Mexican-American. That low share is
largely for two reasons.

First, not all Hispanics are Mexican-American. While this should be obvious,
observers sometimes seem to conflate the two categories. The Bureau's survey
found that Mexicans comprised just 56 percent of all Hispanic voters in 2000.

Residents of Puerto Rican and Cuban ethnicity were more than twice as likely
to vote as Mexican-Americans. Unlike Mexicans, Puerto Ricans are all U.S.
citizens. Cubans tend to be older and more politically active than Mexicans.

This distinction between Mexicans and other Hispanics is particularly
important in assessing the Bush Administrations' plan to strike an
immigration deal to aid Mexican nationals with President Vicente Fox. Some
non-Mexican Hispanics have complained that such a plan would be ethnically
discriminatory against their peoples. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle
(D-S.D.) has emphasized that the Democrats' alternative will not be
restricted to just Mexicans.

Thus, because the non-Mexican Hispanic voters (2.3% of the electorate) and
Asian-American voters (1.8%) combined outnumber Mexican-American voters
(3.0%), Bush's Mexican-only initiative might end up actually costing him
votes among immigrant groups.

Second, residents of America who identify as being of Mexican heritage are
only three-eighths as likely to say they voted in November as the average
American. There are several causes. Residents of Mexican descent are less
likely to vote because they are less likely to be citizens. Further, they
tend to be younger, poorer, and less educated than the typical American, all
of which correlate with low turnout.

If there is little political gain in courting the Mexican-American vote, why
the seeming focus on it? One political observer suggests a symbolic but
politically potent reason: "I think it goes back to Bush being nice to
Hispanics to help him with suburban moderates, who don't like Republicans who
are too mean spirited." Because non-Hispanic whites cast four out of every
five ballots, that might be the most sensible explanation.

# # #

Steve Sailer
National Correspondent
United Press International
Main: 818-766-7687
Fax: 818-766-3787
Mobile: 202-841-1217
12515 Landale St.
Studio City, California, USA
91604-1306
SteveSlr@...