The March 10 Wall Street Journal had a story headlined "Bush's Gambit for Votes of Hispanics Fizzles". Of course, that's not exactly a scoop, since I've been making the same point for a very long time, backed up by copious amounts of data. But I guess it's nice to see the mainstream press catching on. The fact of the matter is that the strongest part of the GOP's argument about Hispanics is that they need to make progress among this voter group. Evidence of actual progress among Hispanics has been conspicuously lacking.

The failure of the GOP's Hispanic strategy is underscored by a just-released Democracy Corps poll of Hispanic likely voters that includes oversamples in three southwestern states (NM, AZ and NV) and among non-Cuban Hispanics in Florida. (You can read the poll here and the analysis memo here.)

In the poll, just 33 percent of Hispanics think the country is going in the right direction and 52 percent say it is off on the wrong track. And they give Bush an approval rating of only 46 percent.

The Democrats retain a huge lead of almost 40 points (65-26) on party ID. This includes a larger lead in the southwest (45 points) and a substantially smaller, but still significant one among non-Cuban Hispanics in Florida (12 points).

In terms of the presidential contest, Kerry beats Bush among Hispanics by 23 points (57-34), which includes a whopping margin of 33 points in the southwest and 7 points among non-Cuban Hispanics in Florida.

As the analysis memo points out, it is unlikely that Bush will get many more votes than he pulls in pre-election polls. Almost all Hispanic undecided voters are likely to break toward the Democrats based on past Hispanic voting patterns, undecided voters' heavily Democratic party ID and the general tendency of undecided voters to break toward the challenger.

In short, the GOP Hispanic strategy is in a shambles. Their clever strategy of targeting Hispanic voters has run into a fairly major problem. The current Republican party (aka the white people's party) just doesn't have a lot to offer an overwhelmingly working class, immigrant-based, minority population like Hispanics. "We're socially conservative, too" or "Some of us speak Spanish" just doesn't cut it with a group whose real-life needs call for more government action, not less.