With the election less than two weeks away there has been a great deal of speculation about the Latino community’s support for President Obama, particularly in Florida.
Most recently, an Interactive Voice Response survey, or “robo-poll,” conducted on October 10-11 by Florida International University showed that 50.7% of Latinos in Florida who identified themselves as likely voters would vote for President Obama, with 44.2% supporting Governor Romney. With a margin of error of 3.65%, this puts the race at dead even in Florida.
These figures are probably not accurate for two reasons (hat-tip to Marc Caputo of the Miami Herald). One is that the FIU poll did not include cell phones. There is a growing consensus that omitting cell phones biases polling results in favor of the Republican Party. Latino Decisions surveys include cell phone only households in their samples.
Another issue is that the FIU figures do not accurately account for the political attitudes of Cuban Americans. For a variety of reasons, antipathy for leftist politics arguably at the top of the list, Cuban Americans are unique among Latinos because they are generally supportive of the Republican Party.
