Immigration Reform 2013 News: Poll Shows Reform Key To Latino Vote For 2016 Presidential Election Republican Candidates

A study was released on Tuesday showing that while Hispanic voters are expected to lean Democratic in the 2016 presidential election, Republican candidates may have a chance ... if they endorse immigration reform.

Latino Decisions, a leading organization in Latino political opinion research, carried out a poll in which they interviewed 1,200 Latino presidential election voters nationwide from June 20 - June 29 of this year. The results show that if there is any chance of a GOP presidential victory in 2016, Republicans need to fare better with Latino voters and the poll shows that this is possible through support of immigration reform.

Of those polled who do not subscribe to the Democratic Party, when asked who they would favor in the 2016 election, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) led with 29 percent of the vote. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush came in second with 13 percent, closely followed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) who took 11 percent of the vote.

Participants were then informed that Sen. Rubio played a key role in helping pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill and under his leadership, undocumented immigrants in the United States would receive legal status and a path to citizenship. They were then asked to reconsider how likely they would be to vote for Rubio in the 2016 election. Given this new information and results showed a considerable difference, with 54 percent of participants now saying that they would welcome the Florida senator in the White House.

For the non-Republicans polled in this study, when asked which candidates they would be most likely to support in the Democratic Primary for the 2016 presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton garnered 65 percent of the votes and Joe Biden came in second place, far behind with only 11 percent.

The poll then pitted the front runners for both parties against each other and when asked if the 2016 election were happening now and the candidates were Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Hillary Clinton who they would vote for, Clinton won by a landslide with 66 percent of the vote, while Rubio took only 28 percent.

In a blog post about the results of the study by Latino Decisions co-founder Matt Barreto, Barreto approached the question of how much support the GOP contenders need for any hope of taking the white house three years from now.

Barreto pointed out that in 2012, President Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney by 4.96 million votes, and according to an analysis of the election returns and Latino voting data by Latino Decisions, Latinos gave Obama a 5.8 million vote margin. Had the Republicans garnered 40 percent of the Latino vote in 2012, that would have essentially erased 3.6 million net votes—or 72 percent of the 4.96 million votes they lost by.

"Republicans don't need to win the Latino vote outright, they just need to stop losing it so badly," Barreto said. "Although Latinos are not the only demographic that Republicans need to improve their showing with, they represent the single largest bloc of voters who are movable."

Barreto goes on to conclude that the polling data suggests that Rubio, first and foremost, but Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan as well, can equal or eclipse the 40 percent mark among Latinos if they provide leadership on immigration reform to get a bill signed into law.

"However, they remain far from the 40 percent mark right now," Barreto said.