It’s no secret that exit pollsters have trouble getting representative samples of Hispanic/Latino voters, with sometimes significant consequences, as in 2004 when it was reasonably clear that the national exit polls overstated the Republican share of the Latino vote.
Well, looks like it happened again on November 2, according to a compelling analysis by Gary Segura and Matt Barreto for Latino Decisions. They note several particularly strange exit poll findings:

[T]he exit poll numbers for Sharron Angle in Nevada are mind boggling. Angle, who arguably ran the most offensive campaign against Latino immigrant is estimated to have won 30% of the Latino vote – an 8 percentage point improvement over John McCain in 2008 who won 22% of the Latino vote in Nevada. It is not possible, nor plausible that Angle improved by 8% among Latinos in 2010 given her attacks on Latinos, and Reid’s strong defense of immigration reform. Rather, the Latino Decisions data in the election poll, and our 10 weeks of data from Nevada in our tracking poll both point to very large gains for Democrats in Nevada, and our 90% estimate for Reid matches very close to the vote totals that resulted in a surprise win by Reid that pre-elections polls missed.
In California, the national exit polls would have us believe that Meg Whitman who saw her favorability ratings plummet among Latinos after her contradictory statements supporting Arizona’s SB1070 and her undocumented immigrant housekeeper scandal, also did better among Latinos than John McCain in 2008. In 2008 McCain won an estimated 23% of the California Latino vote, yet the 2010 exit polls suggest Whitman won 30% of the Latino vote, a 7 point improvement? Latino Decisions estimated just 13% for Whitman in 2010.
In Arizona, Jan Brewer, the force behind SB1070 who claimed Mexican immigrants were beheading innocent Arizonans in the southern desert is reported to have won 28% of the Latino vote according to the national exit polls. In contrast Latino Decisions found back in May that Brewer was attracting only 12% of the Latino vote, and that in October our tracking poll estimated 13% vote for Republicans in Arizona, and ultimately only 14% vote for Brewer in 2010, a far cry from 28%.
In these cases, and across the board in 2010, the NEP Latino exit poll results are laughable.

Segura and Baretto discuss glaring examples of poor Latino vote samples for exit poll purposes, and also evaluate possible reasons for the persistent problem, most notably the failure to sample heavily Latino precincts, and the sparse availability of Spanish-language interviewers.
Does this question really matter? Yes, for a very particular reason. The recent lurch of the national Republican Party towards a position of considerable hostility to comprehensive immigration reform was always a gamble that pitted potential gains among white voters against potential losses among Latinos. If someone like Sharron Angle could do as If well among Latinos as John McCain, then it would appear there was little or no marginal political cost for her immigrant-bashing, and perhaps, conservative strategists might conclude, she or future GOP candidates should double-down on the issue and go all Tom Tancredo in an appeal to white voters.
If I were a Republican, I’d be a lot less inclined to be happy about my party’s performance among Latinos in the exit polls, and a lot more interested in making sure the numbers are right before they lead GOP pols in a very unfortunate direction with respect to the country’s fastest growing voter bloc.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
It’s time to smack down, once and for all, the idea that President Obama will face a serious primary challenger in 2012. This trope has been popping up ever since the 2008 general election, when horserace-hungry pundits speculated that Hillary Clinton would try to knock off the Democratic nominee four years down the road. And it’s only gotten worse with the rise of the “angry left,” which thinks Obama has been too eager to compromise with Wall Street and the Republicans, and considers itself the representative of the Democratic base.
Now, in the aftermath of this month’s “shellacking,” mischief-making pundits have seized on a couple of polls to burnish their narrative: One is from AP/KN in late October, showing that 47 percent of Democrats want the president to be challenged by another Democrat in 2012 (with 51 percent opposed); and one came from McClatchey/Marist just before Thanksgiving, showing 45 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents favoring a primary challenge (with 46 percent opposed).
Sounds pretty dangerous for Obama, right? Well no. For a substantive primary challenge to occur, a coherent bloc of Democratic voters–whether liberal or moderate–would have to sour on Obama and coalesce behind another candidate in such a way that threatens the president’s hold over his base. There’s just no sign of that happening. For instance, the very same AP/KN poll shows that three-quarters of Democrats want to see the president re-elected; i.e., they’re not really discontented with Obama and they just like the idea of a primary that gives them options. Likewise, the McClatchy/Marist survey doesn’t show a single bloc fed up with Obama and preparing to bolt for a latter-day Howard Dean: Given a choice of hypothetical challenges, 39 percent of Democrats and leaners preferred a candidate from the left of the president, and 40 percent a candidate from the right.
What’s more, Obama’s straight approval ratings among rank-and-file Democrats are very high. According to Gallup’s latest weekly tracking poll, 81 percent of self-identified Democrats give Obama a positive job approval rating. Among liberal Democrats, who are supposedly the most likely to rebel, the number rises to 85 percent. Let’s compare that to the last three Democratic presidents, two of whom faced serious primary challenges: At equivalent points in their presidencies, Bill Clinton had a positive job rating among Democrats of 74 percent; Jimmy Carter’s rating was 63 percent; and Lyndon Johnson had a rating of 66 percent. And Carter’s and LBJ’s numbers had to fall by ten or twenty more points before either attracted another contender.
The racial politics of the Democratic Party also make a serious primary challenge less likely. Sure, some progressives have been raging at Obama as of late. But anyone credibly threatening to topple Obama would have to pry away a significant chunk of Obama’s support among African Americans–and in case you haven’t noticed, Obama is the first black president. His job approval rating among African Americans is currently 89 percent, and it has not gone below 85 percent at any point of his presidency. Can you conceive of a left-wing revolt that runs directly counter to the manifest wishes of the largest and most loyal segment of the Democratic base? Imagine Hillary Clinton launching her 2008 candidacy without any of the goodwill that her husband’s presidency had engendered among African Americans.
Above all, primary challenges to incumbent presidents require a galvanizing issue. It’s very doubtful that the grab-bag of complaints floated by the Democratic electorate–Obama’s legislative strategy during the health care fight; his relative friendliness to Wall Street; gay rights; human rights; his refusal to prosecute Bush administration figures for war crimes or privacy violations–would be enough to spur a serious challenge. And while Afghanistan is an increasing source of Democratic discontent, it’s hardly Vietnam, and Obama has promised to reduce troop levels sharply by 2012.
Most importantly, who would run? Hillary Clinton has ruled it out categorically. Al Gore’s electioneering days appear to be long over. There’s been talk of Russ Feingold running (mainly based on a misunderstanding of an “I’ll be back” statement he made on election night which seems to have referred to a future Senate race). Dean would win headlines, but has a poor reputation in Iowa, where any progressive challenge would have to be launched. There are no guaranteed primary vote-getters out there like Estes Kefauver in 1952, and certainly no one close to the stature of Ted Kennedy. And there’s a reason no incumbent president has actually been defeated for re-nomination since the nineteenth century.
So that’s it. What we are likely to see is a marginal opponent: a Dennis Kucinich, or a Harold Ford, or some celebrity who hasn’t held office but is willing to spend some money. More serious comers will be chased away by the hard, cold reality of what it would take to mount a presidential campaign against the White House in places like Iowa and Nevada and New Hampshire and South Carolina. And President Obama will be left facing challengers similar to Pete McCloskey or John Ashbrook, who came at Richard Nixon from the left and right, respectively, in 1972. To the extent that these candidates are remembered at all, it’s as roadkill on the way to Nixon’s renomination.