FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Dan Wilson

November 5, 2010 Shirley & Banister Public Affairs

703-739-5920/703-297-9512
dwilson@sbpublicaffairs.com

LATINO CONSERVATIVE ORGANIZATION CHALLENGES PEW HISPANIC CENTER

GOP Made Important Gains with Latinos
Washington, D.C.— The Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a national organization of
conservative Hispanics, today called on the Pew Hispanic Center to correct its recent report “the Latino Vote in the
2010 Elections,” which alleges that “Latino voters continued their strong support for Democratic candidates
nationwide.”

“The report falsely tries to create the perception that there have not been any significant changes in the political
preferences of Latino voters by purposely understating the modest, but important gains Republicans made with Latino
voters in the midterm elections,” said Alfonso Aguilar, Executive Director of the Latino Partnership for
Conservative Principles. “Latinos favored Democrats over Republicans in House races by a 64 to 34 percent
margin in the midterm elections, compared to a 68 to 29 margin in 2008. This represents a 5 percent increase in
Latino support for Republicans and an overall improvement of 9 points from the margin of difference House
Democrats enjoyed in the ’06 and the ’08 elections, which by no means is an insignificant shift in voter preference.”

Yet the report surprisingly omits key data in its analysis. It compares CNN national exit polls for the congressional
elections in the past midterm elections with the equivalent data for the 2006 elections, but totally omits a comparison
with the 2008 CNN House data. Instead, it erroneously compares the 2010 House numbers with the 2008 presidential
election numbers.

“In 2008, House Democrats did slightly better than Obama and House Republicans did slightly worse than McCain.
Therefore, by comparing the 2010 House numbers with the ’08 presidential numbers, the report underestimates the
performance of House Republicans among Latinos in Tuesday’s midterm elections,” Mr. Aguilar said.

Moreover, the report also promotes the perception that Democrats have a hold on the Latino vote by making the
simplistic generalization that in senate and gubernatorial races “Democratic candidates won the Latino vote, usually
by wide margins.” It again selectively mentions data in its analysis to make its point, not mentioning that Republicans
like Arizona U.S. Senate candidate John McCain and Texas Gubernatorial candidate Rick Perry won 40 percent and
38 percent of the Latino vote respectively.

Even in its analysis of senate races where Democrats did win by a wide margin, the report fails to point out how
Republican performance has improved from the past. In California, for example, Republican candidate Carly Fiorina
received 28 percent of the Latino vote, 5 percent more than the last two Republican opponents of Democrat Barbara
Boxer, and Boxer’s share of the Latino vote has gone down from 72 percent in 1998 and 73 percent in 2004 to 65
percent in 2010. This means that Boxer’s winning margin over Republican opponents among Latino voters has
shrunk from 49-50 percent in the past to 37 percent today.

Hispanic Republicans doubled their presence in the House, from three seats currently to seven in the next Congress.
Hispanic Republicans won congressional seats in Idaho (Raul Labrador), Texas (Quico Canseco and Bill Flores) and
Washington State (Jaime Herrera).

The Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles promotes conservative values and ideals within the
Latino community and works to integrate Latinos into fuller and more active participation and
leadership in the conservative movement. It is an initiative of The American Principles Project, a 501(c)
(3) organization.
For more information or to schedule an interview with Mr. Alfonso Aguilar, please contact Dan
Wilson at Shirley & Banister Public Affairs at (703) 739-5920 or dwilson@sbpublicaffairs.com.
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