Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Hispanic move to Bush a key ingrediant

Dick Morris:

GEORGE W. Bush was re-elected on Tuesday because the Hispanic vote, long a Democratic Party preserve, shifted toward the president's side.

The USA Today exit poll shows Hispanics, who had voted for Al Gore by 65 percent to 35 percent, supported Kerry by only 55 to 43. Since Hispanics accounted for 12 percent of the vote, their 10-point shift meant a net gain for Bush of 2.4 percent — which is most of the improvement in his popular-vote share.

The other two pillars of the Democratic Party citadel remained intact. John Kerry carried blacks by 89-11, only two points less than Gores 2000 showing of 91-9. The Democrat won the votes of single women by 63-36, even as Bush was winning 54 percent of married women to Kerry's 45 percent.

In America today, the Democratic Party is a demographic institution, anchored by its appeal to blacks, Hispanics and single women. Together, these three groups, a combined one-third of the electorate, voted 4 to 1 for Kerry and accounted for more than half of the Democrat's votes. The Republican Party is an intellectual and economic peer group that carries everyone who is not black or Hispanic or a single woman by 2 to 1.

...

Social-values issues are likely part of the reason for the Hispanic vote for Bush is likely. Always more Catholic than they were liberal, Latino voters are among those who cited values as most influencing their vote. But, beyond this is the fact that Hispanics are behaving like any other immigrant population — drifting toward the GOP after they have begun to establish themselves economically.

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Bush's efforts to connect the War on Terror with keeping families safe worked wonders, winning him 54 percent of married women. But among single women, Bush got only 36 percent of the vote, almost 20 points shy of his performance among married females.

The social issues, which cut so well in luring Hispanics to the Republican fold, are killing the GOP among single women — who are 38 percent of all women. The party can ill afford to write off so large a vote.

What Morris seems to overlook on the single women front is that unlike race, marital status is easy to change, and with it attitudes change. If the same women are single four years from now that will probably be a disappointment to them and to Republicans.