Commentary: Republicans and the Latino Vote

The Republican Party will need to seriously consider revising its stance on immigration if it wants to have a shot at the next presidential election. Latino voters by themselves provided Barack Obama with the margin of victory.
According to National exit polls, Latinos increased their percentage of the electorate from 8.4 percent to 10 percent. What makes that significant is that across the nation, 72 percent of Latinos voted for Barack Obama, while only 27 percent voted for Mitt Romney.
Non-Hispanic whites decreased from about 75 percent to 72 percent in the electorate. This was the lowest percentage of non-Hispanic white voters since 1972.
The fact that Romney only captured 27 percent of the Latino vote may be attributed to the anti-immigration stance the Republican Party assumes. Governor Romney had said that one of his first acts in office would be to veto the Dream Act, a piece of legislation that provides conditional permanent residency to certain undocumented residents of good moral character who graduate from U.S. high schools, arrived in the United States as minors, and lived in the country continuously for at least five years.
With the ever-increasing population of Hispanics in the United States of America, the Republican Party will have to change its immigration stance to try to garner a higher percentage of their vote in 2016.
But the growth of the Hispanic population is also reshaping the American electorate. Obama's victory in New Mexico, Colorado, and California reflects the surge in the Latino population as well as its mobilization into politics.
The growing numbers of Latino voters will next impact Virginia and Florida even more and some of their impact will be felt in red states such as Arizona, Georgia, and Texas.