So much for Barack Obama's "latino problem" that the talking heads love to pretend exists, when really, like much of their reporting, little of it is based in reality. Ratings are what drive the narrative.

Hispanic registered voters support Democrat Barack Obama for president over Republican John McCain by 66% to 23%, according to a nationwide survey of 2,015 Latinos conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, from June 9 through July 13, 2008.

The presumptive Democratic nominee's strong showing in this survey represents a sharp reversal in his fortunes from the primaries, when Obama lost the Latino vote to Hillary Rodham Clinton by a nearly two-to-one ratio, giving rise to speculation in some quarters that Hispanics were disinclined to vote for a black candidate.

But in this new survey, three times as many respondents said being black would help Obama (32%) with Latino voters than said it would hurt him (11%); the majority (53%) said his race would make no difference to Latino voters.

Pew Hispanic Center Report

That being said, Obama's campaign still needs to do more to strategize and converse with latino media and bloggers. A good start would be to answer the questionnaire.

Labels: 2008 Election, Barack Obama