"c-span" washington journal and coming up tomorrow morning, new york republican congressman chris gibson and minnesota democratic congressman tim walz discuss opposition to the draw down of the land forces to the lowest levels since world war ii and the chair of the election i ai sis ta assistance thomas hicks will talk. live beginning at 7:00 a.m. eastern tomorrow morning. join the discussion. some live events to tell you about. former republican presidential candidate mitt romney will weigh in on the presidential race following the super tuesday results. mr. romney has been critical of

donald trump. we'll have live coverage from the university of utah in salt lake city 11:30 a.m. eastern on c-span 3 and in the afternoon wayne lapierre will address the conservative political action conference here on c-span 3. every weakened on american history tv, feature programs that tell the american story. some of the highlights include saturday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. eastern, the association for the study of african american life and history host the annual black history and luncheon and a keynote address by the university maryland professor white head. >> first tool is commitment and that's laced with passion. i think of the 1992 olympics and

some of you might remember that with me. i don't remember who won. i don't remember anything else but the guy derrick redmond. on the first lap he snapped his hamstring and got up and homebled around. they waved him off and a man broke through the stands, that was his father and put his hand over his shoulder. they asked derrick why didn't you stop? he said because i came to barcelona to finish a race and not just to start one. >> at 8:00 a.m. on lectures and history, state university professor brian craig miller talks about confederate veterans and how southern organizations founded to aid veterans instead put their money towards war monuments. sunday afternoon at 5:00, persian gulf war veteran recounts his participation and operations desert shield and

desert storm describes the soldiers day to day activities, harsh conditions and war-time pressures. >> we we began digging frantically, frantically, we were just a few miles from the border from where these iraqis were going to come across, so we went up and we just started digging as fast as we could and about this far underneath the ground was shale rock and so the sinking feeling came across as we're digging our positions six inches in the ground to with stand an on lot. >> at 6:30 on road to the white house rewind, the race for the 2004 democratic presidential nomination between massachusetts senator john kerry and north carolina senator jon edwards. for the complete american history tv weekend schedule, go to cspan.org.

next, a forum on the latino vote on the 2016 elections. the discussions looks at key campaign issues for latino voters. later, we'll hear from a former governor of puerto rico, american university hosted this event. time is running, i'll get started as people are collecting the last of the knacks and coffee and so forth. my name is matt wright. i'm a faculty member until the government department au in spa. and i've occasionally done research in this area. i was part of this panel last year when we did it and so now i've come back to help assist as moderator. great to be part of this. i want to thank the panelist all

exciting and knowledgeable people and have expertise and feel like i'm not busy enough trying to do things. nice to have them out here. they know a lot more than i do about this stuff. i'll talk as little as possible. this panel is called the democrats and latino advantage, ronald reagan claimed that latinos or hispanics were really republicans, they just didn't realize it yet. another title of this panel could be "democrats and why latinos still haven't realized they are with the wrong party." so let me, with that, just introduce the panelist. start with matt co-founder and managing partner of the polling and research firm latino decisions which is the p preeminent firm for latino respondents. professor of political science on the academic side in addition to the polling and consulting on the academic side, three books,

i believe, i've lost count and number of articles and non-examining latino political behavior and so forth. we also have with us, maria who works for vote la ttino. she's the vice president of politics and national campaign. her portfolio includes developing a voter registration strategy and national campaigns and heading up organizations and so you see why i'm feeling inadequate now. she's also proud alumni of the hispanic caucus institute of public policy fellowship program and neglect and participated with our women in politics with the we lead leadership training program. finally, we were going to have janet hernandez come and visit us. we are sad she wasn't able to come but pleased she's been replaced by clarisa martinez, the department vice president of

research, advocacy and legislation and work on immigration and efforts to expand latino engagement and public policy debates. what i want to do is open the floor to them, each in sequence and let them have a few minutes to make some points and then i will ask a question or two and then after that, i will be happy to turn the floor over to the wide republic. so i think matt wants to come up here so we'll have him get started. >> thank you. thank you, as a cross between a pollster and professor, of course i have an extensive amount of data and k lecture notes for you to look for. i thought it would be bet tore

look at issues and looking at the last few election cycles and what they have meant for the latino electret and community. let me start by motivating this in 2012. if you look at the headlines in the summer of 2012, this is a new york tiles piece that said obama faces a frustrated hispanic electret which was the case in the summer of 2012 and in particular, the article notes there are 400,000 deportations per year during his term and this was making latinos upset, so something that jim mentioned in the opening panel and this was the case. we found in a poll we did. 41% of hispanics were less enthusiastic of president obama and 19% more. a deficit with the community in the summer of 2012. not only but article goes on to say he had promised to tackle this issue in his first term, in the first year of his first term and he had not done this and we ask in a question and 54% of

hispanics agree obama had not pushed hard enough to get immigration reform done. this is awesome because i have a quote from clarisa in this article. this is something i use all the time in motivating my talk and here she is sitting in the panel and so you had a lot of people. it says warning that it may be hard to prompt this late turnout and clarisa said people are saying what gives? and i remember when i read this i thought that is exactly what she would have said. it sounds just like her. people were saying what gives and people were upset. we asked in a question in the summer of 2012, 53% of hispanics said after three years they were less excited about president obama, only 30% were more excited and finally the article concludes by saying there were groups of students sitting in the campaign offices in the summ summer of 2012. this is not the image you want

saying stop deporting us while running for reelection. that's what happened. this was the headline on election day. latino voters sweep obama to office and key to the reelection and record latino turnout. very sharp change in the last four months or so in the election in 2012 and try to grapple with what explains this turn around. well here is president obama giving remarks on immigration policy that eventually became known as the deferred action for childhood arrivals and signing it, the order and you see dreamers responding here is a group of dreamers that had a rally on the front of the white house with signs saying president obama thank you for making our dreams come true. there was overwhelming reaction in 2012 to that leader sthap obama showed and we saw this when we looked at some actual data of 2008 and 2012 elections

and cam pairompared the key mot factor in 2008 and 2012 using two sets of latino voters. you can see on the bottom we have a variety of issues. health care, generic out reach and what changed between '08 and '12 is those who felt strongly about obama's policy, 68% more likely to vote for him. the key ingredient in 2012 and 2008 issues like the economy, iraq war and health care were more important in immigration, while important was down lower. there was a big increase in 2012 to the issue. it became in 2012 a mobile wising issue in terms of the vote for mr. obama but also the decision to vote. one of the key variables in a model predicting actual validated turnout. i would be happy to talk about that. go and look at the actual

official vote history, people who said they were very upset about governor romney's immigration policy were almost 18 points more likely to vote. you see it had a bigger effect than education, which is a strong motivating factor in the political science models of turnout from lowest education to highest education ten points more likely thinking romney wasn't that bad to thinking he was really bad on immigration means you're 18 points more likely. even more powerful in the traditional predictors. this was happening in 2012. why is that the case? well, in the polling we were doing in 2012 we came to find out two-thirds of latino voter, not just those who are affected day to day in terms of the news covera coverage, so one-third say

someone in their family is an undocumented immigrant. could be a parent or aunt or uncle or grandparent or other family members or a brother or sister. one-third have someone in their family and the reason i think this is such a mobile liizing i is not because it shows up as the number one issue. there was a couple of colonials of truth in the morning panel that latinos do care about a variety of issues but the reason is that i want you to think back to the senate election in missouri in 2010 when this candidate todd aiken was running for senate. and he had this comment about quote legitimate rape. these shorts of issues of reproductive rights and choice and those issues. these are not the single writing dominate issue for women voters.

it's not what they revolve their entire day to day life on. on an average day they probably don't think about the issues. some do but most don't. after he made that statement, very few people were looking at the candidate and the party the same way because it elevated the significance of such a statement and the same thing happens with immigration rhetoric and the latino community and i think that glen really made a lot of comments to explain that. this shows how it is in our community. we asked whether or not you conon who is not just undocumented but anyone detained or deported and went up to a high of 39% in 2013 to they actually knew someone detained or deported. so what motivates this is that one consistent finding in the academic literature is that group threat can mobilize and unify this is across any group of voters they feel their personal well being is threatened, at stake, they are more likely to take part and

participate in politics. writing about california and proposition 187, with reference made to earlier by david, a lot of people found this is what happened and mobilized and energized. we saw this in 2006 with the immigration rallies and see issues of identity and solidarity increasing during this time. in addition, i want to point you to another top pick in literature that talks about emotion. emotion in politics and that emotion suggests that in enthusia enthusiasm, fear, answxiety pla an important role and you see that with trump supporters, right? in the latino community similar to the comment that todd aiken made, there are few issues that can evoke emotion more than immigration, few issues. i'll show you examples of that. how did this become such an important issue? let's see. who knows what this is? this is a very famous picture.

show me what this is. yes? >>. [ inaudible ] >> very good. must be one of your students, jim. 500, 6 00,000 people protesting, rallying and defense and rallying against the bill, hr 4437. you can see eventually this turned in 2010, that momentum continued. this was an ad put together by republican candidate in nevada really racializing the immigration issue and her campaigning. harry reid responded by leaning in very forcefully on the issue bringing the panel together again with maria who is former reed staffer and campaigning here on behalf of immigrant rights. this put it at the forefront and

all came together and the issue and would be remised if i don't mention sb 1070. we have these pictures anyone read these shirts? know what this is? says obama deports parents on here. that's what i say about emotion. this is an issue people are passionate about. you don't see rallies over changing the tax code or things like that. 2013, 2014 after the election obama won and saw the continued pressure, the issue stayed in the spotlight and then what happened? obama came and gave another speech in the east wing and passes dopa for the parents of u.s.-born kids. thank you, mr. president.

if you were a latino democrat you had a 67% of approving and 25 as a 39-point jump. should be driving the way you view the president. if you care about dopa you were at 69. this was more important in the models than party identification. the immigration issue is not resolved deportation is continuing. there was reference made earlier. the fifth circuit put dapa and doca on hold. at the republican debate on thursday. all of the presidential candidates would be revealing daca, rubio would repeal it. he said i don't know how much more clear i can be. they used his previous statements in spanish. the supreme court agreed to take

it up in the summer of 2016 in the heat of the election people will be -- the court will tell us whether or not the parents are eligible for deportation or whether they can stay and have work permits and so that's going to be right there and of course, trufr. and rapist, anchor babies and wall. let me conclude with a forecast of 2016 and the rest of the panelist to hear their comments and of course take any questions and comments towards the end. we'll jump over some stuff and show you just what i think -- i'll show you this. this is a comparison to 2012 and 2015. the bars in pink are what latinos think when romney was the nominee from the collaborative poll that we did with the national counsel in november of 2012 and you see mittromney's major problem is

people thought he didn't care. now when we ask the exact same question, november of '15, not capturing the latest sentiment, they think the republican party is hostile. so romney, which prompted that autopsy reflection we need to do better was because he was pushing a huge percentage of people here. they don't care about us. they are ignoring us and pushing us into dangerous territory. this is the last thing i want to show you. we're on the verge of one of the largest latino turnouts in american history. because of the emotion that is involved in the emotion but takes two ingredients. it takes the anger and you see that on this side. do the trump statements make you more favorable, less favorable towards the gop? 80% of latinos say less

favorable and takes something to vote for. something to vote in favor of because you don't show up and vote. you cast your ballot for a candidate. you're not going in and getting counted. you need both things. we think there is an alignment here if clinton commits to renewing dapa and doca, 80% would be enthusiastic. both appear to be in motion and creates an opportunity. we'll have to wait and see what the civic groups do but a very, very rich on tune pportunity. i went over time and i thank you and i'll yield the rest of my time to colleagues. >> thanks, a lot, matt. appreciate it. i'd like to bring up maria, pleas

please. >> great, thank you matt that was a perfect opportunity to set the table. since matt flagged my former boss, i would like to mention i'm here on a non-partisan on behalf of local latino, we're a c-3 organization that looks to empower latinos through a leadership development. at a glance and matt ran us through important numbers but where we have always centered our strategy and work is through young latinos. it's been around for nearly 11 years and the forefront of the work is young latinos. young latinos on average, the median age is 27. a lot of people are ageing into the electret and we've always known we need to find them where they are, which is online and largely english language. that's what i want to run you through how we look at young latinos and why they are important and that work from

vote latino perspective and national counsel la raza and the messages we sent are resinating much differently than a partisan message of a campaign message. so also, i should also add young latinos will make up nearly half of the latino electret. a lot of folks are commenting on that now, young latinos where will they go? we tend to have a higher share. we're here to tell you best practices and what we see in the opportunities. so the case for dig dill. always been strong on digital. the president likes to say because it's free and starting out, a great way to reach young people and over the years, it's been an effective way for mob e mobilizing young people. early adapt tors and certainly been on the forefront. here is influence online and you

can read the numbers yourself but when people look at this, you say so what? why does it matter that vote latino has such a strong influence online? the reason it matters is because young latinos like many of you in this room who are perhaps young users, we realize the mobilization doesn't stop there and we start here, we start the conversation here and we take it to the ground. we're saying hey, young latino in nevada or colorado, or hey young tejano, register voters in texas. we need you to go register voters in nevada because there is anti immigrant phobia going on and we can largely turn our audience online and get them on the ground somewhere within 24 hours. we've done that with after the latin grammys, when they put down the banner that said latinos won't vote for racists.

we turn that around in a day to get young people in texas to register. so it's one example of why having a strong community online can translate to folks on the ground and this map demonstrates key target states for the 2016 race. again, we'll be doing voter engagement programs where young latinos are, which is college campuses, music festivals, concerts, and we'll also be at south by southwest will be unveiling a new voter app that's for the field organizers, not so much for mass production but really excited about it. looks like a large community for us but important to be in states where perhaps they are not battle ground states and not getting as much love from the campaign or operatives like california or texas. it's hugely important to be in the deep rooted long standing latino communities, as well.

close up at nevada because i play favorites, we have 238,000 eligible of those more than one-third are young latinos and we've seen that in my work in nevada, we've seen a large, large component of our leadership in nevada is driven by young people. we want to not only uplift the work of local partners and young people there already but uplift young latinos not at the table who may be -- and matt is right, immigration is a huge motivator and a primary motivator for families but we see a drop off in efforts so we want to look at who are those young latinos not being really moved by the message of immigration or the tragedy of the broken system and how do we get them to get engaged? >> and so our ideas again are through cultural touch points so when you're at a concert in san antonio at the aztec, which we were at and you walk by our

table and see our literature, it's again with the young latino at the forefront. we launched a concert because we know young people and their families will go to our concerts and we launch and really proud with the partnership and we're glad she's with us and we'll be unveiling different artists throughout the year. mana signed up and the v.l. core as part of the campus program, we'll be standing up college programs to and finally continue the markey leadership development through the power summit, which is a huge leadership, not just advocacy, tech, business, and media. and there is my contact informati

information. >> i wanted to share our work. it's so important i say really empowering our communities, that's long term political infrastructure if not for organizations like vote latino like natiouñymz counsel and lon standing originations and join us and really happy to be here with good friends. [ applause ] >> thanks a lot, maria. >> sure. >> let's bring up the final speaker on this panel. clarisa martinez del castro. >> hi, everybody. the funny thing you'll notice if you were paying attention that matt and i have worked together

so long that we use this same generic power point. [ laughter [ laughter ] >> format. i was laughing when i saw his cover slide. so a couple quick things, i think matt cover aid lot of stuff so gives me the freedom to go into a couple additional things. so latinos in 2012 made headlines from matt's articles. there were a slew of headlines, the noisiest headlines came from the republican side, right? the need to embark on a strategy to significafigure out how to b latinos to the party. where latinos find themself in 2016 even though we got pun

dandan -- pundits to understand, these vo voters are a factor and growing number of state and local races and in the world, people understand the registration. one irony, if you look at the strategy on the republican side, it doesn't seem like they got the memo and if you look at the level of investments in actually getting vo getti getting vetter registration, people engaged didn't get that memo. among latino organizations, this is a sense, more than a sense, the books say there is less investment than previous years and i'm not saying that only

latinos are the ones that do voter registration but i think that being cultural competent and having the credibility understanding with the community is important to some but important to anyone that believes for the people and by the people should include with the people, not just to the people, right? with all that, i think as maria mentioned, the organizations that we don't have a bone in the partisan fight other than our candidate is the latino voter because bringing more into the space could potentially help regrow the middle ground needed to make forward progress on a lot of policy issues, that's what we're trying to do and so we're trying to be creative but

want to address what democrats and republicans are doing in terms of this electret and i think that in many ways summarizes it, right. the electret in 2012 is the best the gop is going to see if they remain on its current track and for democrats, while they -- while the republican party in many ways seeded the ground democrats haven't necessarily moved in full force to seal the deal, right? in someways latinos continue to see either being bypassed by one party and/or being egg neglecte even though that's not the rule, let me be clear. i'm not saying that's the rule. but why are some of the reasons this happens? with the latino community and good story, people want to over simply to such an extent, we use

things partially true to try to solidify or cement big misconceptions so one of the examples in the political world for many years, you can see some of that today when a candidate goes to speak to the latino community, theed a voi ed advict to talk about ingrammigration at included bilingual education and things like that. so if you look at the polls for the last 20 years, the top issues consistently were the economy and education but then what happened, then pundits would say ah-ha that means they don't care about immigration so whatever your position is on immigration, it doesn't matter. talk about the economy, which would also be wrong and you saw

matt's statistically sound modelling on that issue. one of the reasons that you're seeing bernie sanders' message getting traction is because he's talking about an issue that is of incredible importance to the community and always because on immigration, there is less daylight between the candidates on the democratic side. on the other hand, if there is the most brilliant messaging, they see on public policy regarding immigration but for how the candidates speaking about that issue regards this their community and let's face it, whenever we hear the toxic narrative on immigration, it tends to be a very clinic va near to steer up society about the latino community so makes

since that latinos by the same token interpret it that way. perhaps every election season, we end up kind of putting the same points forward, it would be useful if at least basics i would call got settled. immigration is a defining sbe energizing issue and the vast majority of latinos is actually united states citizens and those under 18 is about 93% who are united states citizens. so for some folks that may feel the immigration and closing the wall is going to prevent latino growth in the united states, the statistics would say otherwise.

there are affinities over issues that create a potential for unity in how we interpret candidates and parties and we document believe demography is it. rubio and cruise, let me just make it absolutely clear for the record, cruz and rubio are latino. the problem is some interpret that differently. being latino does not the champion of the latino community do you have to be latino just to clarify those thicks. and the last thing i would say

which i think sometimes democratic p democratic pundits would like to believe and republican party like to advance there is no democratic gene in the latino dna. the biggest termination of how a latino voter votes if you're talking about republicans is what republicans do. they want a choice. so where it comes to latino votes, we hope that changes. anyway, those are the main things matt has gone over the numbers but i think that one of the reasons even though people continue to talk about whether the number of latinos is small or big is between 200 and 2012 the number of latinos casting a ballot grew by 89% compared to 38% for african americans and

decrease of 2% for white voters. it is that growth rate that has people paying attention and obviously, we've talked about the number of people that are eligible to vote but to note specifically to register. voting registration is an element to feel the magnitude of latino voters. i'm not even going to go into that because there is too much but too much data. sometimes it's over kill. what i'm trying to show there, of usually, we go into 2016 latinos are going to be essential in a number of battle ground states and you-all know what those are. last but not least the formula to unlock support is not rock set science. candidates matter and building a relationship for the community and ease with the community, the

issues matter so do they have skin in the game the issues the community cares about and out reach is essential and folks have mentioned but i think that the reid 2010 race is important how gain latino support. the same way that in colorado in 2014 would be an example of what not to do or what not to neg yekt so -- negative. we are trying to make sure that yes, people are registering and show up on election day but it's really about what happens the day after as well and who will hold those elected accountable so the policies they advance continue to feel that something gives going back to the quote.

anyway, so to do that, one of the things we are doing a variety of things as maria said. in 2012 we ran the largest non-partisan voter registration and getting it ready and starting again next week. not the largest latino, the largest non-partisan. we are adding a number of different things because we have a big, big pool of voters and need to figure out how to get to the breakthrough point so we're working with schools on high school project pilots because a lot of kids aren't going to college and we pant to make sure they have an opportunity to register before they scatter to the winds and a couple of tests, operator assistant model as well as online. you heard the big segment, for anybody that follows the latino community closely knows we're a young community. so we're also going to be a large percent of segment of

generation comes next, whenever it's called. we can bring voter registration to the palm of their hands and make sure people have a chance to express their voice for whichever party that's the best at convincing them to get support. thank you. [ applause ] >> thanks very much. i would like to express solidarity with the notion that once you find a power point scheme that works you stick to it, so that makes a lot of sense. i don't want to ask too many questions myself because i want to throw it out to you guys as quickly as possible. i do have a couple questions that i want to get the ball rolling, the first of which so last time we did this, i was on a panel with janelle wong and

i'll have to be reminded whether it was last year or the year before, i have a 1-year-old and 4-year-old so it's a blur. janelle's book from back in 2006 had among other things, the main arguments, as well as republican party failing to reach out organizationally to immigrant communities including not just latinos but asians, as well l . latinos were a big part of it. the first question i want to ask is that was ten years ago, a little -- almost ten years ago. it sounds like a lot of change but i'd like to hear them describe what they think is the democratic party specifically now is doing differently -- first of all, is the premise accurate? secondly, what is different now in terms of what formal democrat party organizations are doing to

reach out? >> sure, so i'll go ahead and start with that. look, i think the climate has truly changed for how both parties lean into this issue or don't. look, i was on the 2010 race doing latino political work and it was really clear that from the leadership down there was an appetite to say to nevada people hey, this is an issue important to us. these are our families. so when folks would try to shame senator reid at the time into not taking a favorable position on the trail for immigrant families, he didn't walk into that and take the bait. he went the other way matt mentioned it in case study. you can look at that and say that was great in that moment but really that out reach was not just about a good race. so that's the other piece that often times campaigns on both sides will come knocking on the door a little too late and they

will come knocking on the door a little too late for hard to reach communities with limited strategies that don't work. if you don't have folks on the ground that understand the community, understand the community's needs, it's central american heritage. so i would say that is the investment in our community often times comes a little too late and secondly, it's not just about strong campaign strategies, it's about having a legitimate steward and champion of the policies which are the same for many americans and secondly, that you have a record, an out reach record that is long standing, not just when you're in cycle. >> yeah, one thing i would add, just maybe as a cav yacht, while i use hispanic and latino

interchangeably, i do not use latino and immigrant interchangeableb interchangeab interchangeably. there is a segment that is latino but i wouldn't talk about what the democratic strategy or immigrant community because the immigrant community is very die skpre verse and varies from state to state. with latino out reach, sorry, democratic out reach to latino voters, it's lackluster. right? it's not even by any means and i've heard quite a bit from advocates on the ground in colorado in 2014 there was no out reach to the community and that's why i use the comparison to the reid campaign, not because reid is a democrat but because i think that's what you need to do to attract these voters, right? the candidate matters. the issue position matter and you still got to do the out

reach. the other thing that's interesting is that okay, campaigns will say look, we have limited resources so it is what it is. we have to look for the question that's going to get us over the top. okay. fair enough. if you look at voters highly likely, the levels of out reach by the time you get to the parties is very low from democrats, less than 50% and lower from the republican party. i would say that it's last luster overall, it varies and it's more intense in battle ground states but if that's what highly likely latino voters are saying, ill mmagine other folks the campaigns to create the profile of the highly likely

habit l voters, not even going to include those folks. >> thank you very much. i wanted to ask matt specifically, something i found interesting in a lot of his work to do with -- correct me if i'm misrepresenting. one interesting thing that pops up is when asked what's the most important issue, latino voters will mention the economy or something not related to immigration and yet in the multi varied analysis it pops out as enormously the number one sort of predictor. so i guess my question is, i can think of reasons but more interested in somebody with a foot in the consulting world and political science world to say how do you translate this into advice for people running campaigns for example? >> yes, i think your description is polling with ncla retend to

find continuing today the economy comes as the number one issue of concern. people are quite concerned about the economy. the recession hit the economy harder. it continues to rate high assen issue people want to address. immigration is creeping up on that list since '06, before '06 it was further down the list but since '06 and rallies and ingle and brewer, this has put immigration higher up on the issue list but doesn't attract the majority of the number one people. it has been in the top two for the last five or six years but what we find is it has the host capacity to mobile liizemobiliz. you may want issues like wage equality and other stuff

addressed but what mobilizes peebl are ones tied to emotion, anxiety, it supersedes and has the ability to make a stronger connection to the electret in the way these other issues are drier. it's hard to separate the emotion out of these other policies on the economy, all the candidates say the same thing. they want to make the economy better, right? on immigration, that's not the case. they don't say the same thing. they say the opposite. so it becomes an issue where confaco contrast is clear and you have to see whether the policy for this or that will 20 years down the road and through, you know, the federal reserve and

everything else improve the economy. with immigration when you have a candidate that says their single-handedly providing work permits and legal status for 1.5 million people that's a very obvious thing, something you can relate to and resonate and attach to. i think that's the sort of the way that ingrags works and i also say that at some point that issue could go away. i strongly believe as the issue gets reresolved, there was a lo of truth in the growth and opportunity report. as the issue gets resolved, it won't be as obvious as an issue because it won't create so much tension. until it gets resolved, i don't see it slipping away from the top package of issues and i do see it continuing to have the most mobilizing effect more than any economic issue could. >> thanks a lot. i would like to ask one more

question of the panelist and throw it open and see what the audience has to ask. and mainly i would think of it this way, the story that emerges out of matt presenentatioentatp act to resonate latino voters, trigger emotional response and especially immigration and this will engage considerations about identity. to me what that suggests is that if i were going to give advice to a campaign, i'd say here is what you want to do, make latinos angry and point to this issue. in the false contrast, that didn't sound like what you guys were doing with organization. the message there was much more positive, right? saying we want to get you to the polls and here is something you can believe in. i guess i just felt like i would be interested in hearing how you

address that. to what extent do issues like anger and anxiety and things come into play? >> sure, that's a great question. and look, i think this matt can speak to this with a little more numbers but we see that especially among young latinos, we're aspirational and young and not as jaded as everyone else. [ laughter ] >> just putting it out there. and so there is a real opportunity to cultivate that positive thinking that kind of forward thinking. i would also add that, you know, absolutely what matt just described is absolutely true but what we see as well in voter engagement models is there a huge drop off of the community of the electret and so although immigration is huge and it does give that votes all of that emotion, there is still a part of the latino american not hearing what they need to hear or having access that they need

to have in ordinaer to finally in and become a voter. absolutely we believe if he uplift voters often time the leaders. whether they are first generation or third generation, they are often the leaders in their homes and even if not helping their parents with language access, they are helping parents with navigating college and helping their parents with helping grandparents apply for social security benefits, right? they are often that person in the household that navigates very complex institutions and what we see is a real prime opportunity to take the young latino and transform into the electret and community building. we firmly believe you do do that through empowerment and fun. our strategies are about saying hey, young latinos love music and culture. we open the conversation so that

there is an opening and sort of next sustained f nexus, let me talk to you about getting racially profiled on your way to school. that is why we think the work that we do is really moving. >> to me, it's really simple. it's not rocket science, right? it's not about being -- making an appeal that is particular to latinos. i mean, if you look at what is happening in the republican primary, you would say that stirring up fear and anxiety works pretty good and not just with latinos, right? i don't think there is an ethno centric thing. latinos are a very optimistic community and i think as much as there's a clarity about the current environment where voting becomes an act of self-defense,

it also needs to be couched in what is what we hope for and what is the narrative of the real america that we're trying to build, right? if anybody saw the oscars, "mad max" did really well and i think that some candidates are trying to paint a "mad max" world but as the result of latinos and demographic change. as much as optimism drives you. the reality cannot escape you and the reality right now we are seeing a very, very high intensity level of coliseum politics where too many candidates are all too happy to feed latinos to the lions, right? in that environment, you bet people are going to think about what is it that i can do and if this is happening in the context of the campaign trail, the tool and the campaign trail is to get registered and become a voter

but very much motivated, i think the messaging that we've seen that the community responds to is very much about latinos seeing themselves as part of the american community, as part of the american family and that's why we think that bringing most -- more of those voices to the electoral arena joined with other americans of good faith of concern and believing that could be helpful. >> thanks very much. so i'd like to throw the floor open and going around with the mike. we got about 20 minutes. as in the case before, only state your name, position in life, whether you're a dog person or cat person, whatever you think -- whatever is germane to the discussion, you know. >> anybody on this side? okay. i'll be right back to you. i saw that young lady and then i'll be back to you. >> thank you. >> thank you.

>> [speaking foreign language] i'm a sophomore here and i had two quick questions for ms. maria. do you have or will you have a voter program here at american or surrounding universities and also with some of the hypocrite latinos that we see this presidential election and also the very hateful messages towards immigrants, as well as latinos in general from trump, what is your campaign or your organization specifically doing with these sort of -- >> buenes tardes. if you're helping me build one, stay after and we can chat because absolutely, we would love to have one here if you're interested in helping us. secondly, again, when you talk about hate as a mobilizer, i think clarisa perfectly elaborated on that and is a

mobile izer for people to vote. we have joined our c 4 side has joined other sister organizations that have done campaigns against when "snl" was having him on the show. we did a large digital campaign around that. we sent some folks up to new york city, as well, to protest and really, it's not like the whole thing is about having self-dignity and respect, right? it's not just one campaign and does that push back against hateful voices? but it's having saying hey, we're american latinos and we count and we're present and we're brave and so all of our campaigns really have a message of pushing back on those very awful things you mentioned. >> hi, my name is angela rubio, i study my master in political communication and i have a question related with the latino

millennials because according to the last research study, they -- let me see. i don't want to misread this. it said the lowest turnout rates were among millennials, those -- and it's like 20%. so my question is relating what do you think or -- about telling anti latino rhetorics mobile wising latino millennials? >> sure, that's millennials. >> that's a great question. that's what i was pointing to earlier is that there is a dropout. and we know it. there's a lot of work to do. we've been at this for ten years more aggressively more recently. i would say two things. one, we can't expect parties to build turnout of our community. we have to do that within our

community. so as latino organizations and community leaders, we have to come together and say how do we invest in this real mobilization effort and not just rely on the hateful things that people are talking about. but in order to do that, at least from a perspective of a nonprofit organization, c-3 organization, we have to do that with our community. when you look at investments into latino organizations, there's a real disparity. and so if we don't have the tools that we need to be testing the message models that are going to work with latinos not coming out because of immigration or testing voter models for things that we have not yet identified perhaps within the electorate, then that requires a lot of strategy, funding creative. so i would add to that just to texturize it. is there a lot more work to do in getting folks out? we're ready to do so and ready to continue building on what's worked really well.

but also building on what's been unidentified to this point. >> i'll add just a little bit on to that thought. this has been a topic in turns of turnout among young people that's very, very important and received a lot of attention. and it is the case that latino millennials are turning out at lower rates than white, black and other ethnic groups. but it's also the case that all millennials are turning out at extremely low rates. most of that is not a latino issue .pit's a young person issue. and the issue that still is the most possiblizing for young people, which two young people have said in the commentary period is the rhetoric. it's more mobilizing than the other issues. now, it's absolutely the case that nothing seems to be working. and much of this, you know, i could talk about in the political science side is what we call life cycle effects.

it's very hard to convince someone to vote until they buy a house and have children and pay taxes and realize why these things make so much important value in their life. so i don't think -- it's absolutely something that needs to be addressed. it's going to be difficult to find a silver bullet that will bring young turnout levels anywhere even remotely close to those of voters over 65, let's say. and we know that there's this stair step pattern. and really, you know, until we have a draft, was the last issue that created massive turnout and what led to lowering the voting age to 18. so it's a huge challenge, and it's something that probably deserves most of our resources to try to figure out. but it's not one -- most of the reason is not a latino issue. it's a life cycle issue. most of those people who aren't

voting now will be voting in 20 years. and there's volumes and volumes of political science literature on this, including ones that follow the exact same people. so we need to figure out a way to try to bring that urgency to them sooner. it's something that we think will take a long time to tackle. >> as more people pay attention to what's happening in the latino community has always been the case becomes kind of news flash, breaking news. so adding to the uber basic list that we started with a little while ago, before millennials, after millennials, young people are going to be a significant part of the latino population. and the same challenges that apply to -- that matt talked about that apply to growing

electoral participation among young people will continue to be the case. i think in particular with our community, when you looked at mf of our young prospective voters stands to be the first ones in their family to be that voter. a lot of times things that seem common sense or that one may take for granted are not so much the case, right? i can tell you that i naturalized as anél, adult. and i didn't really know where do i go register, right? and then the first time i was going to vote, i was a little intimidated. you can call it whatever, vanity. i didn't want to look stupid, right? i had never been there. everybody else seems like they know what they're doing. so partly is obviously the environment where people can see their vested interest, but part of it is also making sure that

people have those tools to go through the process. and so, you know, that's why we're trying a variety of things. the high school registration point. there's legislation to make registration easier. the mobile app, it's in the palm of your hand and you can pass that phone to the person sitting next to you. and if you're engaged and your fren is not, guess what, now you became a voter registration agent just by having that phone. those avenues are going to be important as well in making sure that people have the information they need so they don't feel that that is an impediment. >> ill just add one more quick thing in terms of message. often times when we talk about latino outreach and latino outreach in the scope of the larger community, we often see it in spanish. my parents speak spanish. i grew new a spanish-speaking home. absolutely that was an important part of our outreach to communities. but in other parts, really, that is not how you reach out.

especially to young americans and young latinos. voto latino has had a strong presence on english language digital channels and having partners that are part of publications that are not just exclusively the news that our parents listened to, which was telemundo, also key partners, too. but for young latinos of the young latinos here, i bet most of us get our news either in english mainly and spanish, but not exclusively spanish often times. most of the time. i would just add that. when we looked at some of our census data, folks who got information in spanish participated at higher rates perhaps because they're older, but also because the same investments are not being made in creating strategic english language only messages for young latinos.

>> i'm part of the central issues of latin america class here. i'm a sophomore undergrad. my question is about your organizations through the afro-latino community, they walk the street and they consider themselves part of the black vote. but how does your organization sort of educate them on both latino issues in the context of african-american issues also. >> that's a really great question. for black history month, we wanted to be really intentional in not just uplifting who you often think about in uplifting black history, but we also wanted to uplift afro-latinos who often don't get uplifted. i think it's usually on mondays for the past month, we dedicated one of our graphics to uplift afro-latino in your community for that very reason. we don't see each other together, and so that was really important to us.

and i would say secondly, we think it's really important to lock arms with a lot of young movements that are happening elsewhere with black lives matter. and so we tried really hard to uplift their work and be at the table with them. so that reese zsh i really applaud your question because i don't think we often think about it like that. >> one thing i would add is that, you know, and i don't think you meant it that way about latinos in the context of issues that the african-american community is involved with because the reality is that they are largely the same issues. i think that a lot of times the media in simplifying issues tries to paint police brutality as an african-american issue. and they go to leaders in the african-american community to talk about that issue the same way that even though nclr works on the variety of baskets of

basic issues you would think about from taxation to housing to health to whatever. there's that segmentation that in reality is not there as much as perception because of how it gets covered. health and education disparities certainly on criminal justice issues on police brutality issues, those are, believe me, very much the same concerns. and there is deep and integral work that happens in coalition with organizations in the civil rights and social justice space. african-americans and latinos working together. in addition to one of the things that i think it's, like, really cool about the latino community and not just because i'm latino, the reality is that you can't make a latino without parts of

everybody else. i always remember a joke from paul rodriguez that in the united states we're all going to look filipino. that gives me. we will get to a point that latinos in a nation of mutts, latinos are kind of the ultimate mutt. >> let's have one more question and we'll wrap things up. >> i want you to discuss kind of a prospective future relationship with the latino voter and the democrat party. they have a common enemy right now, but they both failed to deliver the crown jewel, texas in the electoral college and

comprehensive immigration reform. what's going to happen in the future? >> trgsz? >> trg . >> texas hasn't flipped to a purple state. the interest of the democratic party is -- >> i can answer that question, thank you. but see, that question goes exactly to the point i was trying to make earlier. if you look at press coverage of the -- and particularly the political writers, but even in many organizations, they want to automatically equate latino growth with democrat wins. that just has to be challenged. and this notion that if latinos are a significant part of a particular community or state, that state should, you know, have this incredible and

unchallengeable path to become blue. that's not for latinos to deliver to democrats. i'm sorry. i've heard way too many election analysis that when a democrat loses they blame latinos or other voters, even if those candidates did nothing to reach out to the community or to take positions on the things that this community -- that any given community cared about or was being afflicted by at the time. i think that clearly the numbers show that there is a greater affinity on the democratic side and that has to do with not giving credit where credit is due with the fact that democrats are putting more skin in the game on issues that latinos as a general community, right, because we're not all the same. i'm not saying we're all the same. so don't discount the point based on that, but

statistically, the democrats, there are more of them who are showing that they're championing those issues the community cares about. but to go from that to say, you know, latinos in texas having delivered the state to democrats, when i think anybody who studies the state can see the incredible under resourcing of the electorate in that state, the lack of competition and meaningful outreach, i would say that we' got to start challenging people who try to make that point. one is causality for the other. >> thanks. we're going to break for a couple of minutes then come back to our third panel. thanks very much.

>> i'm pleased that we're managing to stay on time. we have plenty of time for this session and an opportunity to have the kinds of discussion after our panelists intervene that we've had in the first two sessions. it's also because this is one of the most valued rooms on campus, which means that if you reserve it until 5:30, you need to be out because there's something else happening at 6:00. and so we always follow the schedule, but all the more reason that we're going to do so this afternoon.

i'm very pleased to be co-sponsoring together with scepter for congressional and presidential studies at the school for public affairs. i should mention when i introduced my colleague who is the director of ccps, i mentioned his new book. i did not realize there were copies available outside. there may still be, and i strongly recommend it. really a very thoughtful book about an issue that really matters, which is the polarization of american politics. in this panel is looking at an aspect of the coming election that in many instances may be linked to these phenomena of polarization. we labelled this panel swing states and wild cards.

mark lopez of the pew research center whose work on demographic character iistics of the latino populations has been valued per mark has been here on several occasions through events that we've held anticipate really always am happy to welcome him back. he's written quite a bit on hispanic identity, electoral behavior, attitudes regarding immigration and so on. after mark's intervention, i'm very pleased to welcome governor luis fortunio, governor of puerto rico from 2009 to 2013. he's now here in washington. i should note that before he was governor of puerto rico, he was also the commonwealth's representative to the house of representatives. and he's been involved in a variety of public service positions for quite some time. he has a jd at university of

virginia. i just found out, is it his grandfather or great grandfather? >> great grandfather. >> had the jd of the washington college of law before it was affiliated. and finally, the professor in au's department of governor, dean meritas at the school of public affairs. very active contributor for the programs of latin american latino studies whose work on u.s. cuban relations and on the politics of the cuba issue throughout the united states, but including among cuban-americans in florida and elsewhere has been very influential. bill has done quite a bit of work on cuban politics in society as well as u.s.-cuban relations. many of you will be familiar with the book that came out last

year, "back channel to cuba -- the hidden history of negotiations between washington and havana." bill and i also just fennished the normalization of relations between the u.s. and cuba, which should come out in about six or eight weeks. so with regard to the swing states and wild cards. there were a number of states in which presidential elections -- the outcome of presidential elections is likely to hinge. that is the purple states rather than blue or red states. these are states like colorado, florida, nevada, new mexico, virginia with heavy latino populations. and so one of the questions we want to address in this session is how the latino vote may impact in particular swing states. and we could look at that both at the presidential level or perhaps at the senate level as well.

another thing we thought was particularly interesting for this cycle and i think governor fortunio can reflect on is the role of the substantial migration of puerto ricans to the mainland, and particularly to florida over the past several years. this was in election swing state florida but also perhaps beyond. that was one of the wild cards we saw as peculiar to this particular election cycle. another is the change in u.s. policy towards cuba. historically, the notion was that the cuban-american vote in florida and to an extent also with new jersey was influenced by the republican party's commitment to a hard line with regard to relations with havana.

the question of whether the politics, the electoral politics of the cuba question may have changed and the degree to which the quite dramatic policy change introduced by the obama administration just over a year ago might tilt things one way or another in florida. there are quite a number of wild cards, further wild cards we could talk about. and maybe in discussion we could. my understanding is that there's been an acceleration in the number of immigrants who are naturalizing in the interest of being able to participate in the 2016 elections. there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the fate of voter i.d. laws in a number of states where turnout is likely to be an important variable, shaping outcomes.

the migrants of central america, youth migrants, it's certainly very much possible. what would happen, someone mentioned over lunch, what would happen if there were significant terrorist attack that were involved in transborder in u.s. and mexico. our panelists will get us started on thinking about those and then we'll open up thinking about the discussion. thank you. >> i hope i'm not too repettive from what i was before. as soon as i get this to my first slide. i want to talk about some of the work we've done at the pe we

research center. just to give you a little background. we' we're funded by the hayes opinionic transproduct. we're a fact tank not a think tank. we take no position on policy and make no recommendations for candidates. all that is important to keep in mind b because someone might ask me what should the candidates do? i say i don't know. that's on purpose. you heard a lot of the conversation already today that 27 million or many latinos are going to be 18 years of age and a u.s. citizen. where is this growth coming from? if you take a look at where the growth is coming from, you'll see that young people turning 18 is really the biggest source of growth for the hispanic elect. about 3.2 million we're going to project between 2012 and 2016. but another important source, of

course, is the naturalizations. and as eric hibted at before, this is an important source and perhaps an accelerating source. that this estimate of 1.2 million, it's an estimate and it's a projection. keep in mind, it actually might be something different come the end of 2016 when we actually have data to sort of see what has happened. we are getting a sense from a lot of the work that we're doing, looking at why people choose to naturalize, et cetera, that there is somewhat of an uptick in naturalizations. but it's also important to note that there are about 5.4 or 5.5 million hispanic adults who are in the country legally and have not yet naturalized. many of them are mexican who have been green card holders for over 20 years and it's important to note that there's a real group, a real pool of people who could potentially become u.s. citizens and therefore potential voters for the hispanic vote this year.

people migrated out of the island of the puerto rico to the united states. what's important here is that florida is the top destination for this current crop of out-migration. about 31% have settled in central florida since 2012. so keep in mind, we're talking about florida is actually the biggest magnet for these out-migrants, though many are going to other places, too. like texas, like new york, like connecticut, like pennsylvania. but florida is getting the single largest part of this outmigration. now, of course, there are some people who pass away. so the hispanic population is not all about young people, right? and we project that by november 2016, there will be about 27.3 million hispanics eligible to vote. a little side note. for asian americans, it's really interesting. rather than youth being the driver of its electric rat's growth, it's actually naturalizations. so the hispanic electorate is driven largely by u.s.-born young people coming of age. and that's true of whites and

blacks as well. but for asians, it's the flip. more are naturalizing than actually turn 18 in any given year. that's really an interesting difference for that particular population. close states and close races are going to be. we have taken a look at presidential races, the senate races and governor's races. here, you can see the share hispanic in each of those states and all the states according to the cook political refort as of about a month ago were likely to be competitive races this election cycle. all very interesting. you could see florida is up there at about 18.1%. nevada, 17.2, colorado 14.5. you' got illinois at almost 11%, virginia at just under 5%, along with pennsylvania, wisconsin, et cetera, et cetera. i think what's interesting to note here is that the distribution of the hispanic population, of course, this is a population that's dispersindisp.

even though the numbers like small, in ohio it may be 3.2%, but a year ago was 1.5, 1.7%. so we're seeing some rapid growth of some small numbers, but rapid growth, even in places like florida, nevada and colorado. nevada particularly has been growing fast. the spanish electorate said this is a growing number of eligible voters. i want you to take a look at these two lines. i think one of the other striking things here is that we talk about how hispanic vote has become more important than ever. that's true. but also the rate at which the number of voters is growing is actually slower an slowing compared to the number who are eligible to vote. that means in any given presidential cycle recently, you've seen more hispanic nonvoters than voters. i think that's important to note. you can see how these two lines are separating from each other.

it will be much interesting to see how higher it goes as a result of mobilization, interest in this election, et cetera. that's one of the big wild cards. how many hispanics are going to turn out to vote. as people are mentioning, people mentioned a report that we did on the share of hispanic eligible voters who are millennials. you can see that here, compared to blacks, asians and whites. the hispanic share is approaching nearly half. the millennial generation are people ages 18 to 35 this year. so keep that in mind. this is a pretty wide swath of the population. but when you look at u.s. born hispanics, the median age of u.s.-born hispanics is 19. that means half of the hispanic population born in the united states is still not in adulthood. that gives you some sense of today's youth concerns, or the relative importance and weight of youth among hispanic voters.

this is, i think, another wild card. how many are going to vote? how many are going to turn out? but it's also not just about this election cycle, it's something that's going to continue to the next two or three decades, as we continue to have a number of first-time voters, a number of young people who may not know where to register. they're beginning their adult life, so they're moving around. they're establishing families. it's actually hard to get a young person to register to vote. and the previous panel of a lot of folks are talking about, this might be a youth issue more than a latino issue. that's true. but the truth issue is perhaps more of a challenge for hispanics than it is for other groups. what about nativity? i think this is one of the most interesting charts in our most recent report. look at the share of foreign born among hispanics. it's been relatively flat since about 2000. in other words, naturalizations are really playing a big role in shaping the size of the hispanic elector electorric rat. they're holding their own in the

face of the swamping of so many young latinos coming of age. so we've seen the number of hispanics natchizi naturalizing accelerating and keeping their own among the hispanic electora electorate. why do we care about that? foreign born hispanics turn out to vote more than native born hispanics. so this naturalization wild card could potentially be very important. but you could also see many hispanics are second generation or third generation. meaning they're u.s. born. the second generation have immigrant parents but the third immigration are u.s. born with u.s. born parents. so we're talking about immigration. immigration may be particularly important relevant to immigrants themselves, perhaps even the children of immigrants. but i don't know about that third generation if it's as important of an issue as it is, say, for that first and second generation. so some of the conversation in

the last panel about why hasn't immigration been a mobilizer for young u.s. born hispanics, perhaps because many of them are third generation english speaking and something that may not resonate. >> you probably saw this, voter turnout rates for hispanics have been somewhat lore than they are for whites and blacks. a lot of this is partly due to the geography of the hispanic vote, candidate outreach and the relative size of the youth population. >> somebody asked about millennial turnouts. you can see for example, even among hispanics, younger voted at lower rates. but generalry speaking, young people do have lore rates than everybody else. you can see that in the far chart that hispanics have among lower turnout rates. keep in mind, there's always a gap between young people and older folks for any one racial or ethnic group.

i think it's important to note although their share is declini declining. one interesting thing about their share declining you know who's responsible for the declining share? it's not california. california back in 2000 had 25, 26% of all hispanic eligible voters. it's about the same today. it's texas who's gone from about 24% to 19% of all hispanic eligible voters today. i think this reflects a growing undocumented population in texas and a rel to tifly young population that even though the hispanic population has grown there, the eligible voter population is not growing as fast. florida is also very interesting because of all the migration of hispanics who are moving there, both from the northeast but also from puerto rico. the new influx of cuban immigrants. there's a lot of interesting things going on there. you can see the hispanic population is largely concentrated along the border and some key states with large urban areas.

take a look at our interactive and find out how many hispanics live in your congressional district and how many are eligible to vote. in 2006 to 2008 in terms of affiliation with the democratic party. the republican party numbers have been slowly rising up through 2014. i don't know what they are yet. we just got back some polling numbers so i hope we have something new to show very soon. but despite that, many hispanics don't have a very good view of the republican party. so when you take a look at which party of hispanic voters cares about the community more, you'll find 10% say the republican party has more concern than the democratic party for hispanics. 50% say the democratic party, but you can see how much that

has changed since 2012. i'm going to stop there because that's a lot of stuff already. i apologize if it was repettive. thank you. >> i believe the discussion comes at at an excellent moment. what i will do to avoid being repettive, i will avoid some of these charts from the beginning. however, that one is interesting. the fact that in 2012, the republican party candidate got the lowest hispanic vote percentage wise since watergate.

most of you were not born back then. of course, with the exception of the two years when we had a three-way race for the presidency. that chart is growing dramatically on the hispanic side. it's going down. in term of percentage of the electorate. we have seen how four of those states fair and how the growth of a hispanic percentage of electorate continues to be important. the opinion of hispanics regarding democrats and republicans and how they differ regarding both the national parties. you can see the democratic party has a clear advantage.

accept when it goes to respect values and concerns of hispanics, and that is important. in terms of favorable and unfavorable opinions, same thing we'll see here. without the need to discus this any further, well, not exactly. three hispanic republicans that have done well in their respective states actually governor martinez and sandoval are extremely popular in the respective states. and they were both re-elected in a resounding victories.

the public discourse doesn't help in that front. we've seen how, for example, some hispanic groups specifically puerto ricans in the i-4 corridor in central florida, even though they voted in 2004 for george w. bush re-election, they voted overwhelmingly for president obama in his re-election just a few years later. even though that is not the number one issue amongst hispanics, especially puerto rican americans.

traditional whether i, republican proposals tend to resonate well amongst hispanics. and it's important also to understand that hispanics tend to be entrepreneurial, and 1 in 10 hispanics own a small business. and that's also very important to note. in terms of these numbers are interesting as well. if we go from this chart. that number is pretty low. the number starts going up. and those that support limiting spending, lower taxes and reduced regulation goes up as well. and then whether you should

promote opportunities look at those numbers as well. and whether they are likely to consider voting for a republican, you see that there is potential for growth in the hispanic community, of course, depending on who the nominees are. and that's going to be very, very important. i want just a few wild cards. certainly donald trump's candidacy. everything i thought i knew about politics has gone out the window with this candidacy. so again, i don't know why you invited me, but i appreciate the invitation. but that is tapping into a sentiment that's real, it's out there, and it's not unique to the united states of america. you go to other person democracies and look at what's going on in europe. in spain, they had elections back in december. they still have not been able to put together.

look at the national front in france. it's unbelievable, the anti-immigrant sentiment that is creeping up. same thing with some of the former eastern european countries. and in germany, angela merkel who looked to be invincible is in trouble because of what has transpired, especially on new year's eve with the new wave of ims. so in that sense, it is not unique to america, and there's a sentiment out there. it's not the topic of today's discussion, but certainly you could argue that it may have something to do with the fact that after the '08-'09 fiscal meltdown a large group of people were left behind and feel left behind and feel that their elected officials are not responding to their needs.

whether we were discussing this earlier, whether we think that tomorrow perhaps secretary clinton will be able to clinch the nomination to be frank. if i ask anyone in this room if back in july anyone here thought that bernie sanders could be as competitive as he has been in the early primaries, i bet you no one would have ventured to say that would be the case. the analysis of today, as to what could happen if donald trump continues to garner 34% of republican votes in every primary.

governor kasich carries ohio. senator cruz carries texas. even if senator rubio doesn't carry florida, donald trump would not have enough delegates come mid july to win the nomination in the first round of voting. the delegates are bound to their candidate only in the first round of voting. after that first round, it's up for grabs. and anything can happen and if you don't think so, who could have thought that chris christie wow endorsed donald trump this week. so again, anything is possible in the realm of politics. you would have thought that. okay. i will give you $20 and you play the power ball for me this week. what would happen if hillary clinton is the nominee, and where will bernie sanders voters

go. and i will tell you something that will probably make you, you know, say okay, now why did you invite this guy here at all. i see data pointing in that direction. and again, it's the year of the wild cards and that's why we're here. so again, thank you to the invitation, i look forward to the discussion. thank you. >> would we have invited you despite not having predicted some of these things. having predicted the rise of donald trump were a prerequisite for speaking at american university, our students in politics wouldn't have any instructor. none of us saw this coming.

then president obama and raul castro made their surprise announcement last december 14, 2014 that they had agreed to normalize u.s. cuban relations, that drew immediate fire from republican presidential hopefuls. obama was the worst negotiator in his lifetime. he's abused of bailing out cast castro ex-governor bush accused obam. ma of betraying freedom. donald trump felt he could have gotten a better deal. notice that he didn't attack the idea of engaging with cuba. the argument i want to make

today is the politics of the cuban issue are actually more complicated than most of these reflexive republican responses would indicate. so first, let's look at national polling on obama's opening to cuba. as you can see, the president's opening is overwhelmingly popular with the general public. above 70% favorable. it's even supported by republicans. it's getting more popular, as you can see over time as we see how the process of normalization unfolds. and just recently, gallup did its normal thermometer poll. more people view cuba favorably than unfavorably. now, of course, the real battleground on the cuba issue is florida where it has high salience for cuban-americans and where they are a large enough

proportion of the electorate, about 5% to make the difference in this swing state. and as we know, elections in florida can be really close sometimes. four republicans in florida, the cuban-american community has historically been a very solid consistent base since the 1980s. and the conventional wisdsdom among democrats, beginning really with bill clinton was the right strategy was to try to outflank the republican candidate on the right on the issue of cuba so that cuban-americans then might cast a vote based more on social and economic issues, democrats could pick up at least a reasonable minority of that vote, and that could be the difference. barack obama took a different approach to the issue. he appealed to the growing

moderate segment to the cuban-american community by promising to repeal limits on family travel and remittances and to actually engage with cuba. trends of republican and democratic votes among cub cuban-americans in south florida. there's an exit poll analysis and a precinct analysis and they're different in terms of the outcome, but as you can see, the long term trend clear. in every cycle since 2000, the cuban-american vote has become less reliably republican. so what's going on here and what does it mean for 2016? the realignment of the cuban-american electorate is the result of changing attitudes that are rooted in changing d demographics. the floyd international university has been polling in the community since 1991 and tracking these attitudes. and polls show us that more

recent arrivals and those born in the united states have more moderate views than exiles who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s. and it makes perfect sense. the early arrivals were political refugees who lost everything when they fled cuba. they have been economically motivated. they still have family on the island. they travel back and forth. they send remittances. so for the recent arrivals, a more normal state to state relationship between cuba and the united states is a good thing. because it makes it easier to maintain these family ties. there's been engagement on cuba. you can see a reasonably consistent trend upward. and over the years, a fairly dramatic shift of opposition to any kind of commerce from cuba to engagement to the point that in the most recent 2014 poll,

52% of cuban-americans in south florida favored lifting the embargo against cuba. so now if we look in more detail at that 2014 poll, one of the things we see is that -- so here's the breakdown on the embargo question. you can see that early arrivals and the generation -- generational difference in terms of age. you can see a difference in terms of when people arrive in the united states you can see that the older exiles are much more conservative than the younger. 64% of registered voters say it's important in deciding who they're going to vote for. this is the only constituency in the united states where this is such a salient issue.

and note that 63% voted they're more likely to engaged. this is arooils. as you can see, over time from these last three censuses, that exiles arriving before 1980, that is to say, the more politically oriented exiles have fallen from 81% to the community to just 24% in 2010 and obviously my best estimate is only about 20% of the community today. this manifested itself in votes. they're registered at higher

rates and they turn out to vote at fairly high rates. whereas, people who are more recent arrivals, particularly those who came at the end of the cold war, most of them are still not yet naturalized citizens. one of the things this tells us is that over time this long-term trend in the cuban-american community becoming more moderate is going to continue as these later arrivals, as more and more of them become naturalized. so you can see among cuban-american citizens in florida, the early arrivals are down from 65% in 1980 to just 30% in 2010. and the biggest block now are cuban-americans who are born in the united states. all of these factors together have eroded the traditional alignment of the community within the republican party and you can see it here in the

changing registration numbers. this community has been largely successful and the cuba issue is not any longer the way it used to be, sort of a third rail of politics in florida. so how have cuban merps reacted specifically to obama's opening to cuba? and this is a national poll of cuban-americans done on the anniversary of the announcement, that is to say in december of 2014 and as you can see, the results favor very closely the florida international university polls, 56% of cuban-americans in favor of obama's opening. and more importantly, again, you can see that support has actually increased over time as we've seen what the normalization looks like in practice.

you can see that here again by age, the younger generation clearly in favor of this, the overall generation still doesn't like the idea of engaging with cuba. and by decade of arrival, same thing. those who came early are in disagreement with what obama has done, but interestingly, not by huge numbers. whereas those who came after 1980 are very much in favor of it. and perhaps most important, cuban-americans born in the united states are overwhelmingly in favor of what obama has done. and as i said earlier, this is now the largest segment of the community and the largest segment of the cuban-american elaekt rat. the embargo, of course, requires an act of congress to be removed.

so that's going to be an issue in 2017, and the cuban-american community now is fairly solidly in favor of moving ahead on removing it. how much difference does the cuban issue make among hispanic voters nationwide? well, the answer is really not a lot. generally speaking, hispanic voters are in favor of what the president has done, but it's not really all that important an issue for him. it's not salient. it doesn't make much of a difference. but this is interesting. hispanic voters are evenly split on this. even among hispanic republicans there is aed model amount of -- to people who it makes a difference to, they're even

split to people who like what obama has done to this opening and people who don't. and then this is for me the most interesting. voters are actually more favorable and more likely to vote for a candidate in favor of opening to cuba than noncuban hispanic voters. if we reverse the question and say are you likely to vote against somebody who opposes obama's opening to cuba, you get almost exactly the same numbers. marco rubio or ted cruz, heading into the florida primary since they have staked out absolute opposition to obama's opening to cuba. and, of course, the president is going to be going to cuba on march 21st. so the week after the primary,

it's likely, i think, to emerge as an issue on the republican side going into the florida primary. it hasn't been an issue thus far. it's going to be tricky to cruz and rubio, taking on this issue when the community now has moved in a different direction. donald trump has consistently led in the florida polls. and his more moderate position on cuba and on obama's opening may actually give him an advantage among cuban-american voters. >> thank you to all our panelists. there's quite a bit one could follow up on. i want to open it up soon to our

audience, questions and perhaps comments. just before i do that, i'm interested, the numbers that you came up, that you had regarding naturalization. i was reminded when i looked at bill's slide on the relatively small percentage of post 90 or 2,000 cubans who had naturalized. what do we know about who is naturalizing and where? >> among hispanics? >> yeah. >> when we take a look at the hispanic community and those who are in the country ilegally and eligible to naturalize. the naturalization among cuban-americans is on the order of 75% or higher. so that's all these different immigration groups that leo had up there. but i would also say if you compare it to central americans, only about 44% of those in the

country legally ultimately natural size. when you take a look at mexicans, you see only about 36% of those who are in the country legally actually choose to naturalize. so cuban-americans are overrepresented among the population of naturalizing hispanics, because keep in mind, the naturalization process amongst cubans is still going on. there's a lot of people who have arrived, for example. there's a question of why many mexicans choose not to naturalize. some say they're not interested. some of them actually return home because they plan to return home at some point. some also will say things like they're worried about the cost of the process, or they're worried about taking the test, any test in english because they're worried about their english skills. but keep in mind, most of those mexicans who have not naturalized have been here for 20-plus years. they were naturalized during the 1986 erca many of this em. in terms of numbers, mexicans

are underrepresented given what you would expect given the numbers who are here legally. >> governor, with regard to the migration of puerto ricans from the commonwealth to florida, what can you tell us about the demographics of that group, levels of education, what we might know about the likely electoral behavior given what past behavior was in puerto rico. what perspective can you give us on that? >> sure. well, actually, i should note that in the last two years the rate of migration from puerto rico to central florida has tripled. so again, this is a very recent phenomenon. you know, it has always been there for decades. but not at the rate that we are seeing it at this moment.

since puerto ricans are born citizens, the data is sketchy at best. however, i have seen data that tends to indicate that most of them tend to be -- there are two groups. one, they are pretty young and rel located and they can find a job in florida immediately. and then you have those who are retired and are looking for the services under medicare that are available at a better level and in a warm location and that is or what have you. in terms of politically, whether they are active or not politically, it remains to be seen. the level of activism from those that have moved to florida in recent years, it's not as high. they continue to follow the politics on the island very

closely. actually, some of them remain registered and will vote in puerto rico, which is quite interesting. however, i've seen, again, early numbers -- it is sketchy -- that tend to indicate that more of those supporting statehood, which is a prevalent issue on island, are moving that those are not supporting statehood. the roots of the statehood movement in puerto rico, if you go back years, take you to the old statehood republican party. so the roots are republican, but then again, candidates will matter and the type of campaign that they run will matter tremendously. some candidates might turn them off tremendously, and others may be quite attractive. so it remains to be seen. >> very, very interesting. one last thing before i turn it

over to professorially -- professor leogrande -- this may be for everyone on the panel. do we have any evidence of whether policy toward mexico or policy toward central america, say, or for that matter, policy toward puerto rican with regard to fiscal assistance and so on, might become the new cuban american phenomenon? that is to say, drive electoral behavior of latino sub groups in the united states not because of domestic politics so much as because of politics toward country of origin? anybody have a sense of that? >> one thing i can say, i know that there have been some efforts to try to mobilize

central americans in particular around u.s. foreign policy toward central america, and it hasn't been all that successful. and i think the difference is that, you know, when the cuban american -- the first waves of cuban american exiles came to the united states, they came -- they self-identified not as immigrants, but as exiles. that is to say, they had an expectation of going back. and so the political motivation for them leaving, their sense that eventually they would go back, predisposed them to being very active around the issue of u.s./cuban relations in a way that i think wasn't true for mexicans or central americans. >> i have campaigned several times in florida and the two main issues are jobs and location, amongst puerto ricans there. do you know the trend in other groups? >> i would say for the mexican

population, it's so diverse, so big. you have many people with long roots say in texas, or recent arrivals in southern california or in georgia. so i'm not sure how many connections mexican americans feel to mexico. you really do feel when you go back to mexico, yes, have family there, but it's a different country, and it's something that i'm not as connected to as i am here. i think that might be true of many mexican americans, but i actually don't know. >> thank you. so i'd like to open it up to -- yes. and in the front row. >> hi. this question is for governor fortu fortu fortuna, the fact that marco rubio does not support it, even

though jeb bush, a republican, does, and has caused a lot of controversy, and i wanted to see what you thought about his particular stance affecting the florida primary and puerto ricans in florida, you know, being against what he's saying about that. >> to be fair, and i know that what came out of the debate the other day -- >> and also, do you agree or disagree with his comments? >> sure. but to be fair, he has published columns on this issue. his is a comprehensive approach. and actually, most people, including myself, would agree that you need a comprehensive approach to this. that just implementing chapter 9 to be applicable to puerto rico will certainly not solve this problem. you need more than just a restructuring mechanism. you probably need something

similar to what we see here back in the '90s in terms of a fiscal control board, to provide the island actually a level of certainty that has gone away. you probably want to think of one or two pro growth mechanisms to see the economy grow, because that's the underlying issue. so in the columns that he's published, including in puerto rico newspaper, senator rubio said i prefer a comprehensive approach with a little bit of everything and there's an order. and that's what he was trying to explain in the debate, because i have read the columns. that's why i knew that he said that should be a last resort, not a first resort, and more than just approving chapter nine bankruptcy ap lickability will not suffice and most people that have studied this issue will tend to agree. when governor bush endorsed the

chapter 9 apicability, it was a year ago. a year ago, many things had not happened. there had not been a default on any of the 18 different types of credit. the current budget had not been approved, and the budget did not try to slash expenses or deal with some other issues. so, again, many things have occurred in the last year that have swayed people to move away from just granting the island this tool, to saying, yes, but that's just part of a larger plan, and other steps ought to be taken in order to address it properly. >> what about the effect on -- [ inaudible ] >> well, again, if he's able to explain -- i don't know if he will have the resources to do it or not, i really wouldn't know -- but if he's able to explain as he has done with those columns that have been published on his behalf, that he

favors a comprehensive approach to this, perhaps yes. the house of representatives here is likely to -- actually on march 15th, the state of the florida primary is likely to have a mark-up in the committee of primary jurisdiction on this issue, approving a comprehensive package. and in the following two weeks, it's likely to go to the floor for a vote. by then it will be too late, because it will move over to the senate. it will be late to impact the florida race, but i could envision the senator saying, i favor that bill that is being discussed on the 15th. >> thank you, yes? and could you please identify themselves. >> i'm abigail golden basket, i'm the director of the latino society program at the aspen institute. i have two questions.

i'd like to know the governor's thoughts on the candidate's positions on the puerto rican debt crisis and how that might impact turn-out. and the other is for the professor, i'm not sure you you like that pronounced, on the popularity of obama's policies with, first, i guess refugees, arrivals in cuba, versus the second wave? how much does race play into that? and how much would that perhaps account for his popularity among the second wave of economic and frankly darker, browner refugees? >> sure. of the five remaining republican candidates, only one or two have expressed themselves on this issue as of right now. they have all expressed themselves on the status question, but not on this.

again, as i expressed earlier, i believe that if others take the same position that senator rubio has taken, it's a more nuanced approach to this, suggesting that a comprehensive approach is required, a more wholistic approach to this, i think it will be a wash. but we haven't heard from the other four, to be frank. of course, on island, which will hold its primary this sunday, this would be important. by the time we get to florida, we would know what the house bill, and it may have an impact or not, depending. because it wouldn't have gone to the floor yet for a vote, but it may have an impact at that moment. >> that's on the republican side. have we seen anything from the clinton campaign as to how they may be trying to position themselves? >> the clinton approach, which

came out almost a year ago, is pretty similar to governor bush's approach, but that's what was on the table at that moment, and whether you approve -- whether it's chapter 9 or some sort of restructuring mechanism. we saw some tweets from secretary clinton after that debate that the republicans had late last week, again hitting senator rubio on that position. but again, in 140 characters, you are not explaining a comprehensive approach to such a complex situation. even though i know we try to force -- people try to force us to do that. i think, again, if there's an in-depth discussion of this issue, a comprehensive approach makes sense that will not be offensive to anyone, i would say. what moves voters is something

that is extremely attractive or dramatically offensive. and it would be neither. >> there's no question that later waves of the cuban migration to the united states are a lot more racially diverse than the very early waves. they look a lot more like cuban society, where's the exiles who came in the '60s and '70s were about 93% white based on the u.s. census of that community. whether or not that made a difference in terms of their support for president obama in 2008, 2012, possibly it did, at the margins. but i think the changes in opinion within the cuban american community on issues related to cuba is really a long-standing trend now. and it pre-dates obama. and for the reasons i expressed, it's going to continue after obama. so while it may have been a few percentage points attributable to that, i think the longer term

is just that the basic interests of the community are changing. >> thank you. herbert francisco. as a mexican with resident alien status in the united states, i'm wondering if you've undertaken any research in mexico that might shed light on the idiosyncratic behaviors of mexicans in our elections and how that might be affects perceptions or behaviors here in the united states? >> very interesting question. no, we've not taken a look at that. over the years, we have, though, explored the attitudes of mexicans about the united states and about life in the united states. and as you know, some of the work we have done has shown that mexican migration to the u.s. has really slowed substantially. in fact, there are now more mexicans returning home than coming. it's a flow, but these things change over time. but when you ask mexicans about life in the united states, it's quite interesting. fewer today will say that life

is better in the united states than in mexico. or life in the united states is just as good as ths in mexico. the share that say things are better in mexico is on the rise. about 1/3 of mexican adults say that. you also find fewer mexicans say that they know someone in the united states. all in line with the outflow of undocumented immigration since the recession. and the mexican immigration population in the united states has also fallen by about one million people. so it makes sense that mexicans in mexico have fewer connections, are not saying life is better than it is in mexico. so many things are lining up together, but we haven't taken a look at the political part of that, though. >> just maybe as a way of kind of drawing some of the parts of

the discussion we've been having wild cards in swing mtjxstates, there a way in which we can think about the various different kinds of wild cards that we've put on the table, in this panel and earlier as well with the discussion of voter registration drives and other kinds of things, that might allow us to think about how each of these wild cards when put together in a broader trend, or whether they're working? in other words, are they stand alone wild cards that will be hard for us to understand in a bigger electoral picture, or do they add up to something collectively? >> i suppose the related question is whether you see additional factors that may weigh on latino participation and votes in this election, that are peculiar in comparison to the standard as well. >> sure, go ahead. >> well, for example, if secretary clinton ends up being the nominee and she picks a

latino candidate, castro, that would be significant, i would say. same way, whomever is the republican nominee, it's not as clear as on the democratic side, if governor susana martinez, brian sandoval are picked, or somebody else, that could also have an impact, i would say, as well. if for any reason actually marco rubio is the nominee, i would say that that would be significant as well, more so in some states than in others. perhaps in the eastern states more so than in the western states. although there are ways to address that between now and november. so, again, yes, there could be many moving parts. and then, if there is a candidate, any candidate, who is tremendously offensive during the race, i think that would be

a reason to also -- no, a nominee. we don't have a nominee. that would certainly be reason to move on that. and that probably would be a national movement, not just a regional movement, i think. >> it's a very good question. i do think a lot of these things, particularly for the latino vote, are intertwined together. it's partly about the youth. we need the outreach. we've outreached to latinos, not just focused on young people, but focused on all latinos because the voter turn-out rates remain below others even among those who are college educated or are adult. i think also there's a lot of potential wild cards, so who might the candidates might

the vote. 2014, there was an effort to get out the latino vote, but it wasn't as big as it was in the past. it was 27%, it was a record low for a lot of people, not just hispanics. but that, i think, is something that's potentially a big unknown and problem in terms of getting out the vote for latinos, irrespective of all the stuff we talked about. >> let me add one thing, in the case of florida, in addition to the shifts under way in the

cuban-american community, the non-cuban-latino population is growing. so the cubans are a minority in the community. and the non-cuban latinos tend to look a lot more like latinos in the rest of the country. so it's yet another challenge for the republicans holding on to florida. >> hi, mike mccarthy for the center for latin american studies. two questions. so, i'm intrigued by this participation gap, you know, we've seen a lot of articles written about it. will the latino power vote be realized this election. i'm wondering if you could place that in a broader context, to talk about eligibility and participation rates throughout the united states. in other words, is it disproportionately largest gap in the latino community as compared to other new eligible

communities in the united states? youth, more broadly, regardless of ethnicity and then within other ethnic communities. be really interesting to hear about that. provide us some invite to think any what mobilization strategies could look like. and then on this recent question about the florida vote, just to put it very frankly. if you're a republican strategist, would there be any value to continuing to try and mobilize cuban americans for the gop party, if the proportion of the population is just sort of dwindling vis-a-vis other latino communities? in other words, what is there left to say about the cuban-american vote on the right in florida? is it just power brokers at the level of the former foundations like the cuban-american national foundation and so on and so forth, or is there something still that the party could gain at the sort of basically level? thanks a lot. >> very good question.

so, in terms of the hispanic vote, a couple of things. hispanics register to vote at somewhat lower groups than other groups of americans. but once they're registered, the voter turn-out rates are much closer, the gap is much smaller. but the problem is often times getting hispanics to register. it's true of older hispanics, and younger hispanics. you think about the story of texas. i've met a lot of adult texans who have a lot of opinions about candidates, issues, et cetera. and you ask them, are you registered to vote? they're hispanic, and they say no, because i don't have the time. but they have a strong opinion about it. so this is the challenge within the latino community. getting people registered, to get them to vote. but the impact of the youth is a big part of this. how does this compare to other groups of americans? generally speaking, latinos are registered to vote at lower

rates, but once registered, they tend to turn out similarly to other americans. but there's still a gap. in my previous job, i used to fund research to get latinos out to vote. and one of the things they found, face-to-face, hispanic-to-hispanic, was often most effective to get them to register and to the polls. that i think is very powerful, it's also very expensive and hard to do. and so shoe leather matters a lot. a lot of the research we also funded was to look at ways to short cut that, what about an e-mail campaign, a social media campaign, get people registered at a concert? all those things seem to work, but they don't seem to be as good as the face-to-face, latino-to-latino, get out the

vote, can i help you do this? those seem to be more effective in the research that we did at the center. >> so in terms of the gop in florida and the cuban americans, of course the older generation that's the most conservative and most rejectionist in terms of engaging with cuba, tends to be wealthier. it provides a lot of political money, and it was really critical in electing a number of the cuban american members of congress from florida. and so they are really the spokespeople for that segment of the community. and the rest of the party doesn't want to disavow them obviously. also, you know, cuban american registration even now is still about 2-1 republican. so it's still an important constituency for republicans, even though it's down from 4-1, what it was 20 some odd years ago. one interesting phenomenon, some cuban american republicans are saying, we ought to change this open-door immigration policy and stop letting cuban immigrants

into the united states under the cuban adjustment act and letting them adjust their status after a year and getting a fast-track to citizenship. i think the hidden agenda there is that these people are voting democrat. >> couple of things to add to the demographics of florida that are also interesting, yes, cuban americans are less than half of all hispanics in the state of florida. puerto ricans are rivaling them in size now. and you have colombians and venezuelans who naturalized and are part of this process, even mexicans as well. but florida, miami-dade county, you've seen growth in the number of registered democrats and no party fill yation. you look at orange county in the central part of the state. their republican voter

registrations have been flat, and passed up by democratic ones, but particularly, no affiliation. so many of the cuban americans, i think, are very energized. and they have higher turnouts at the national level, that's true in florida too. and yet i have dinner with my sister's husband's family and talk about the cuban issue. her father-in-law, when i asked him, what do you think about obama's opening up, blah, blah, blah, he's like 80 something years old. he stood up and started yelling, and got really engaged and he went from english to spanish. and his son grabbed his hand and he was measuring his -- he got so riled up about it. so they're very engaged. if you want to see it, i invite you to come and have dinner. [ laughter ] >> a number of us attend an

annual event in havana that's devoted to u.s./cuban relations. and there's an audience of maybe 80 or 100 people. largely specialists on u.s./cuba relations, but it's a diverse group. and there's always a few moments in the meeting where some conciliatory suggestion is put forth with regard to the cubans some make some concession to the americans and we see several people get up and you want also to just hang on to the pulse and make sure -- so it's on both sides of the florida state. >> there was one last question. this gentleman. >> over there. >> okay. >> my question is, i wanted to point out there's a lot of conversation about getting votes, outreach, figuring out whether latinos agree more with republicans or democrats, whether they agree with the stance of this candidate or that

candidate. and there's not as much of a conversation on how do politicians actually reach out to voters and figure out what they think, especially among young people, and as we pointed out, young latino voters actually have disproportionately one of the lowest turnouts, even less than black and asian people of the same age range. and to that, i did want to point out the blueprint 2016 report from the roosevelt institute, which is the largest think-tank for young people to be part of policy conversations at all levels. this is the latest edition of our blueprint report that highlights the opinions of millenials and what our policy priorities are going into the 2016 elections. the results basically break up policy priorities in six fields. i'd be glad to share this information, so you can know more about what millenials care

about, what their ideas are, and what they want to see from their local electeds going forward. >> and could you identify yourself. >> francisco alvarez with the roosevelt institute. >> thank you. >> i've got a story for you. that's a great point. a few years ago at the pew research centre, we did a look at young latinos. they were very enlightening. it was great. but after each and every one, many came up to me and said, thank you, often times with tears in their eyes, thank you for asking me what i think, because nobody ever asks me what i think. so i do think that you're right, there's a lack of engagement on the part of candidates or politicians or even just understanding what young latinos, young millenials are most interested and concerned about. i would love to see it. >> thank you. my name is krista bufta monty, i'm a m.a. candidate here,

before this, i was a community organizer in the state of idaho. we registered 3,000 latinos in 2014. if you've done voter registration, it takes one hour to register two people. in the latino community, it's much more difficult. so given that, we saw 2014, given that it wasn't a presidential year, much more difficult to turn out latinos, and even in the primaries, i wanted you to maybe touch upon the difficulty between latinos coming out in a primary and then in the general election. because at least what we've seen in idaho is that people are not bought into one party or the other, especially given that the state is very red. but in general, latinos, i guess the word that we had in our focus groups, they don't want to give their vote to one particular party, because they want to be, kind of fight for that vote. can you talk about maybe some predictions in the general election that we're seeing and then this anomaly of latinos in

nevada going to donald trump and maybe talking about that and what happened there. thank you. >> we don't have a prediction on how many hispanics will register or turn out to vote, but i do think you will see records for both of those numbers. the pattern we've seen for the last two years, there was a prediction of about 13 million. that seems about right, given the patterns that we've seen. we'll see where things go. i don't know where we're going to be. keep in mind, from 2010, to 2014, many were predicting there would be an additional million hispanic votes, but there were only about an additional 180,000. so you can see it can turn around real fast in some way or another. about donald trump winning the largest share of the hispanic republican caucus-going vote e eey -- i think it's important to put those qualifiers in there. it looks like he did. there are some latinos who do

support donald trump. they happen to be republican. and the ones who showed up in the caucuses, who were latino, and it's a small group, they did, it looks like, give him more support than any other candidate. that's perfectly fine. because it reflects the diversity of the community to a large extent. i know a lot of people are wondering why he said he won the latino vote. we need to qualify that. he won the republican vote among latino nevada caucus goers. not all latinos. and there's a lot of spin that goes with this all over the place, fyi. but there are republican latinos -- or there are latinos who believe very much in the viewpoint of donald trump. in some of our surveys we've seen over the years, upwards of 15 to 18% of hispanic adults want to deport illegal immigrants. so it speaks to the diversity of the community is also partly

what makes us strong, but to some extent, hard to outreach to. >> thank you very much. i'd like to thank all of our panelists for a very interesting discussion. i'd also like to thank all of you for joining us over the course of the afternoon. a couple things by way of follow-up, and i don't know whether my colleague wants to say any closing words. let me just say on behalf of both the center for latin american studies and ccps, we will be circulating a report coming from this event. we'll make it available on our website. i'm confident that we'll do so and that it will be good because aaron bell, recent doctorate in history here, who does a variety of work with the center, does a variety of projects with the center, has agreed to try to write something up, and that always turns out well. so within the coming weeks, we will post something on our

respective sites and encourage you to look at that. we also expect to cover some of these issues of latinos in the 2016 election, in a blog that we produce at the center for latin american and latino studies. we posted something this morning that may be of interest to some of you, looking at what the ramifications of having an eight-person supreme court might be for the review of the decision of the 5th circuit with regard to president obama's executive actions. and i think we didn't talk a whole lot about that particular, um, intersection of the administration's introducing an ambitious executive action, having countersuit -- suits trying to block them from doing so, and now perhaps a stalemate in the supreme court about where this may go, and how that also

may impact the -- at least the debate around lantino-related issues. my colleague dennis who is out there, who is our supreme court and legal correspondent, wrote a very interesting piece that's up on the site. if you go just to our home page, you can see on the left-hand side the blog, click on that and if you wish to subscribe, that's easy to do as well. so, again, i very much appreciate your attendance. i appreciate all the thoughtful interventions by panelists over the course of the day. and it's always a pleasure to work with ccpa as well. >> you should also mention that we'll put links to the c-span coverage of this. they plan to show all of it. and they usually show it several times. but we also have a web cast that we'll put links to that also, if

you want to see that. i want to thank you very much and your staff, it's been a great conference, great panelists, we made a contribution today. thank you. >> thank you. and thank you all. [ applause ] >> dr. ben carson announced he's dropping out of the republican presidential race. his campaign released this statement. quote, i have decided not to attend the fox news gop presidential debate tomorrow night in detroit. even though i will not be in my hometown of detroit on thursday. i remain deeply committed to my home nation, america. i do not see a political path forward in light of last evening's super tuesday primary result, end quote. follow road to the white house coverage on the c-span networks.

>> an editorial this week getting a lot of attention from the "union leader" in manchester, new hampshire, governor christie was our bad choice. and joining us from manchester is the publisher of the newspaper, joe mcquaid. thank you very much for being with us. >> happy to be on board. >> you began by saying, boy, were we wrong. what led to this editorial and your sharp words at governor chris christie. >> it goes without saying that we don't think donald trump is good for the country, and we were incredibly disappointed that governor christie, who we had endorsed in the primary, and especially since two days after the primary, he told me that he would never endorse trump, turned around and endorsed trump. >> you say in the editorial, watching christie kiss the donald's ring this weekend and make excuses for the man

christie himself had said was unfit for the presidency, demonstrated how wrong we were. and now this week, six new jersey newspapers calling on the governor to resign or face a recall. >> yeah, we should have paid more attention to those new jersey newspapers when some of them were suggesting that our endorsement of christie was wrong-headed. and mike tweeted this week after the papers asked for his resignation was, where do we sign up for that. >> you had the chance to meet with donald trump on a number of occasions last year before you issued you're editorial in the winter. what were the conversations like with him? >> they were exhausting. he sucks the energy out of a room. it's pretty much a monologuec9t which donald trump tells me everything about donald trump, including his golf scores, and where he's been and what he's

doing. but there was not a lot of depth there that we could determine, so we decided that he wasn't the guy we were going to support. >> why do you think governor chris christie decided to endorse him? >> because christie has no scruples and no future, and is rolling the dice, hoping to get some sort of job in a trump administration. that's all i can figure. >> have you ever written an editorial like this, basically retracting an earlier endorsement? >> no. have not had occasion to. i know other papers have on occasion. and the "boston herald," which had already endorsed governor christie in the new hampshire primaries for pretty much the same reasons we had, issued, i think, the same day, and i haven't read the actual editorial, but pretty much a mea culpa, we're sorry, as well. >> have you been surprised by the amount of attention this has been getting around the country?

>> i told my wife the other night that this editorial in which i admit our mistake has gotten more positive comments than the editorials i do endorsing people, so -- it's been interesting. a couple of senators and a governor have called and said it was the right thing to do, and the comments, i mean, we have our usual crazy fire-burners on the comment section of the paper, but some have said, well, you shouldn't have done it in the first place, but you manned up by admitting your mistake. so that's been hardening. >> joe mcquaid, here in washington, senator republicans are worried about losing control of the senate. your own senator kelly ayotte, one of about seven or eight that barack obama carried in 2012 in a tough re-election battle. so how is it playing out in that particular race?

>> i don't know how the trump phenomenon is going to play out. i think that senator ayotte makes a good case for her re-election. governor hassan has been the governor for a couple terms. the governor in new hampshire is what is called a weak governor. they do not have a lot of power. so governor hassan hasn't been table to do a lot of things plus or minus, but she's certainly hoping that the democrats hold sway in november and that that top of the ticket down will help her. but i don't know. i should probably endorse governor hassan to ensure senator ayotte's re-election. i hadn't thought of that. >> let me ask you about donald trump. winning seven states yesterday, capturing the imagination of key parts of the republican electorate. where does this lead the

republican party in the next few weeks? >> interesting observation. i saw one today that said of the states that only republican registered voters can vote in the primary, trump has only carried 1 of 4 states. i think a lot of people are t h turning out for trump who haven't paid much attention to politics -- or republican politics, of late. i think trump has tapped into a vein of distrust and unrest with washington and the establishment rascals. i just think he's a terrible vessel for this righteous anger andire th ire that a lot of peo have. but the phenomenon with trump, no matter what he says, or what is said about him, it appears that his followers don't care. they're so fed up and trump can do no wrong with them. so we'll have to see, a, if he

makes it to the general election, how that pans out. there's a lot of speculation and that's all it is at the moment. >> and the speculation on mitt romney, what he'll say tomorrow at a major speech in utah? do you think anything will change the dynamics in this race so far? >> well, i think governor romney is going to denounce trump. that's the only reason i can imagine for him having a press conference at this point. and the dynamics, i think they're still going to change. i think an awful lot of people, in new hampshire, for instance, trump was the winner, but not by a majority, and he finished with the second lowest percentage of the republican primary vote in the state's history. we had a write-in and by henry cabot lodge back in the day that got a higher percentage than

this guy got. so i don't think it's over. i think that if he does not have the majority he needs going into the convention, there's going to be a lot of sober assessment. it will be interesting to see, i think there's a debate thursday night now that dr. carson has stepped aside, that leaves four people, and perhaps more people will tune in and find out who knows what about the issues. >> in the editorial, the publ h publisher of the "union leader" calls governor christie a bad choice. joe mcquaid joining us from manchester, thank you as always for being with us. >> thank you to c-span. you guys do a great job. ♪ during campaign 2016, c-span takes you on the road to the white house, as we follow the candidates on c-span, c-span radio, and