FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASECONTACT: Dan WilsonNovember 5, 2010Shirley & Banister Public Affairs703-739-5920/703-297-9512dwilson@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 the2010 Elections,” which alleges that “Latino voters continued their strong support for Democratic candidatesnationwide.”“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 Latinovoters in the midterm elections,” said

Alfonso Aguilar, Executive Director of the Latino Partnership forConservative Principles

. “Latinos favored Democrats over Republicans in House races by a 64 to 34 percentmargin in the midterm elections, compared to a 68 to 29 margin in 2008. This represents a 5 percent increase inLatino support for Republicans and an overall improvement of 9 points from the margin of difference HouseDemocrats 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 congressionalelections in the past midterm elections with the equivalent data for the 2006 elections, but totally omits a comparisonwith the 2008 CNN House data. Instead, it erroneously compares the 2010 House numbers with the 2008 presidentialelection 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 thesimplistic 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 Republicanslike Arizona U.S. Senate candidate John McCain and Texas Gubernatorial candidate Rick Perry won 40 percent and38 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 howRepublican performance has improved from the past. In California, for example, Republican candidate Carly Fiorinareceived 28 percent of the Latino vote, 5 percent more than the last two Republican opponents of Democrat BarbaraBoxer, 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 hasshrunk 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) andWashington State (Jaime Herrera).

The Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles promotes conservative values and ideals within theLatino community and works to integrate Latinos into fuller and more active participation andleadership in the conservative movement. It is an initiative of The American Principles Project, a 501(c)(3) organization.