Or, more accurately, closer to where it was to begin with. I argued the other day that it was quite unlikely that Bush actually got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, as the national exit poll claimed, and that the 59 percent share given him by the Texas state exit poll was particularly fanciful.

Now we have this AP item, showing a drastic downward revision in the Texas figure for Bush's Hispanic support:

In the Nov. 3 BC-ELN--Texas Glance and BC-TX Exit-Poll Excerpts, The Associated Press overstated President Bush (news - web sites)'s support among Texas Hispanics. Under a post-election adjustment by exit poll providers Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, 49 percent of Hispanics in the state voted for Bush, not a majority. The revised result does not differ to a statistically significant degree from Bush's 43 percent support among Texas Hispanics in a 2000 exit poll.

The revised BC-TX-Exit-Poll Excerpts showed that 20 percent, not 23 percent, of all Texas voters were Hispanic. They voted 50 percent for Kerry and 49 percent for Bush, not 41-59 Kerry-Bush.

Quite a change and it affects not just the Texas Hispanic estimate, but the national one as well. As Steve Sailer correctly points out:

That reduction of 10 points in Texas would appear to knock almost 2 points off Bush's national Hispanic share by itself (since the exit poll claimed that Texas accounted for 18% of America's Hispanic voters), and the reduction in the Hispanic share of the Texas vote from 23% to 20% would reduce Bush's national Hispanic share as well (because he still had more Hispanic support in Texas than nationally).

We shall see what further exit poll revisions do to the estimates of Bush's Hispanic support. But my--and Sailer's--estimate that Bush received around 39 percent, not 44 percent, of the Hispanic vote is looking better and better.