Approval Ratings

In the latest Survey USA polling of sitting governors, Bob Taft is again running last in approval ratings with an anemic 14% positive rating. There no news there, but as I was perusing the cross tabs, one thing stood out.

Taft's approval rating ranged from 8% to 17% across all tabs with the exception of two. Taft received a 31% approval among Hispanics, and a 32% approval rating from "Other" races. Why?

I can't think of anything Taft has done to especially ingratiate himself to these minorities, so I don't think that's it. I think it's more likely that neither political party has managed to achieve a great deal of market penetration in these groups. It's something we need to look into.

While Hispanics and other minorities represent only about 4% of Ohio's population, it's a misleading number due to the fact that many African emigres list their race as African-American, or black. The fact that the African-American approval rating mirrored job approval numbers among whites underscores that point. I think the number of "New Americans" may in fact be twice that number. Consider this, in the 2000 census 6.1% of Ohioans lived in a home where a language other than English was spoken.

These are our voters for the taking. They hate Bush, and therefore we have an edge over republicans in wooing them. They also turn out to vote in unbelievable numbers. I worked in a precinct in the 2004 with a large Somali population and I think every single Somali on my voter role showed up to vote, and they voted straight ticket Democrat, at least all of them did that we could get a sample ballot. We have to do a better job of getting sample ballots out in these communities.

It should be noted that we didn't really do anything extraordinary to bring the Somali population into our fold. Michael Coleman was the mayor here when they arrived and they mostly like the guy. It could have easily went another way.

So, what's the answer to increasing our market penetration with New Americans? I'll let you think about that for a while, then give you my ideas in another post on another day.