Hillary Clinton may be popular among Latino voters, but Democrats have expressed concern for months about a traditionally poor Hispanic turn out hurting her chances of election.
However, some Latino pollsters say an overlooked factor in mainstream polling data could produce a welcome surprise for Democrats on November 8, especially in several states with large Hispanic populations, such as Florida and Texas.
"In many states with large Latino populations, polls underestimated the Democratic advantage," according to Gabriel Sanchez, a political scientist at the University of New Mexico who is one of the principals at the polling firm Latino Decisions.
That's because the national polls aren’t really focused on the Latino voters, and only have a small sample of Latinos, resulting in a larger margin of error, he explained.
When a sample is only 100 to 200 voters, the margin of error can leap between 10-14 percent. Most polls tend to sample at least 1,000-1,500 voters, with a margin of error of only 3 to 4 percent.
The polls also target the “wrong Latinos,” making their sample unrepresentative of eligible voters, said Sanchez. By not offering interviews in Spanish and relying on interviews via internet and fixed home phone lines, they end up with a biased sample of more assimilated, native-born, higher income and higher educated voters, according to internal poll research conducted by Latino Decisions.
First-generation Hispanics speak less English, rely more on cellphones and often don’t have internet, he noted.
Latino Decisions, some of whose team are working for the Clinton team, did a webinar earlier this month in an effort to alert the media to two key mistakes it has detected in polling. The webinar was conducted by Sanchez, who is not working for the Clinton campaign.
It cited statistical analysis this year by David Damore, a researcher at Latino Decisions, who found “clear evidence” that Latino respondents who appear in mainstream national polls are statistically more likely to be Republicans.
Eduardo Gamarra, a Miami pollster focusing on the Latino vote, agrees and blames the faulty methodology on cost. “It is too expensive to draw large Latino samples if you also are trying to grasp the national market,” he said.
More targeted Hispanic polling conducted for media outlets such as Univision and Telemundo has consistently found stronger support for Clinton than the mainstream national polls.