Velasquez Institute Decides NV Latino Vote

There’s been much debate about the Latino vote in Nevada. Entrance polls had Bernie Sanders winning by 8 points. The Clintonites cited their paid pollster Latino Decisions (I liked it better when they were independent) polls of heavily Latino precincts being won by Clinton as proof she won the Latino vote. The problem with that is that not at all Latinos live in Latino-heavy precincts anymore. Hell, I don’t live in a Latino-heavy precinct. Latinos are everywhere, even in Nevada. So, the Willie C. Velasquez Institute did their own study where they explained it all.

In my view, I think both Bernie and Hillary get participation ribbons for helping increase Latino participation to 19% of those caucusing. In WCVI’s view, the poll results are consistent with Clinton’s margin of victory. Here’s their story:

After hearing about disputes between the Sanders and Clinton over the Edison Entry Poll Survey results on the Latino vote in the Feb 20 Primary Caucuses WCVI undertook a review of the publicly disclosed data.

WCVI concludes that the survey results are statistically consistent with the margin of victory of Hillary Clinton on Feb 20. The main dispute among pundits and between campaigns has been the assertion that it is statistically impossible for Hillary Clinton to narrowly lose the Latino vote (45% to 53% with Latinos representing 19% of the voters) and narrowly lose Whites (47% to 49% with Whites representing 59% of the voters) and still win the election by 5.3%.

However WCVI concludes the Clinton margin of victory is adequately explained by the large margin of victory Secretary Clinton won among African American voters (77% to 23% with AA’s representing 13% of the voters).

Simply put there is no relevant statistical inconsistency between Edison’s Entry Poll results for Latinos, Whites, and Blacks and the overall election results. Based on this fact WCVI concludes that there is no statistical basis to question the Latino vote breakdown between Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders.

We note that some analysts have said that Secretary Clinton’s victories in heavily Latino precincts proved that she won the Latino vote. However the methodology of using heavily Latino or “barrio” precincts to represent Latino voting behavior has been considered ineffective and discarded for more than 30 years due to non-barrio residential patterns been common among Latino voters since the 1980’s.

Lost is this controversy is the fact that the data shows a record high Latino vote share in the Democratic Caucuses with Latinos representing 19% of the vote compared to 13% in 2008.