National Survey of Latino Protestants: Immigration and the 2008 Election

The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, in partnership with the Jesse Miranda Center for Hispanic Leadership, Faith in Public Life, America’s Voice Education Fund, and Dr. Gastón Espinosa, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University sponsored a national survey of Latino Protestant registered voters to assess their views on immigration and the 2008 election. This growing voting bloc provided crucial support for George W. Bush in 2004 and was widely viewed as a key emerging constituency for the Republican Party in elections to come.

This survey finds that Latino Protestants have shifted their support to the Democratic presidential candidate by a wide margin in 2008 and immigration is a key factor in influencing their vote. However, Latino Protestants are as likely to associate negative rhetoric on immigration with both parties as they are with only Republicans – indicating that Democrats have not distinguished themselves as champions for immigration reform.

The Miranda Center for Hispanic Leadership Study of Latino Religions and Politics Protestant Registered Voter Survey (LRAP) was conducted from October 1st thru October 7th under the supervision of SDR consulting. The random sample of Hispanics throughout the United States was a duel frame sample of Hispanic Surname Random Listed sample and Hispanic Surname Registered Voter sample. Results are based on live telephone interviews nationwide with 500 U.S. Hispanic registered voters who identified themselves as either Protestant or other Christian. These voters were all screened to confirm that they were 18 years of age or older, Hispanic, a registered voter, a citizen and declared that their religious preference was either a Protestant religion or other Christian.

Because Hispanic Protestants are a smaller percentage of the overall Hispanic electorate, about 25%, they were over sampled from a universe of 1,104 Hispanic Protestants and Catholics to reach 500 completed interviews. The margin of error for the 500 Hispanic Protestant interviews is +/- 4.4 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. More than 80 percent of Hispanic Protestants self-identified as born-again and/or attended an Evangelical denomination. An analysis of the entire universe will be released in 2009 by Gaston Espinosa, PhD.

Read the entire research paper here.