Why didn't McCain win the election on immigration?

November 06 2008 by Liam Clifford

In theory, US immigration should have helped McCain win the US election. He took the same moderate stance on immigration that Bush did four years ago when he won 44% of the Latino vote, and it is the support of the Latino community in Florida that is widely thought to have secured Bush his all-important win in that state in 2004.

Yet in the 2008 election the Latino vote came out heavily in favour of Obama, who took 66% of the vote, as opposed to McCain's meagre 23% - despite the latter's apparently sympathetic stance on immigration.

McCain, along with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), had sponsored an immigration-reform bill in 2000 that would have set-up guest-worker visas and created a "pathway to citizenship" for undocumented and illegal immigrants. The bill was defeated, as were comprehensive immigration-reform proposals in Congress in 2006 and 2007, which McCain also supported.

Mark Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, told CNSNews.com:
"McCain did reach out to the Latino community. He had a group of advisors to help him, and he specifically aimed commercials at Latinos, not just in a few states but across the country, but he was running at a time when there is generally a good level of dissatisfaction with the current administration, and Latinos are no different in (holding) that view."

In the current economic climate, said Lopez "the economy, jobs and cost of living were more important issues [than immigration] to Latinos in this election."

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