I came across an interesting article by T. W. Farnam, “Political divide between coasts and Midwest deepening, midterm election analysis shows.”
There was one thing that bugged me, though.
Near the end of the article, Farnam writes:
Latinos are not swing voters . . . Exit polls showed that 60 percent of Latino voters favored Democratic House candidates – a relatively steady proportion with the 69 percent the party took in 2006, the year it captured 31 seats.
Huh? In what sense is 60% close to 69%? That’s a swing of 9 percentage points. The national swing to the Republicans can be defined in different ways (depending on how you count uncontested races, and whether you go with total vote or average district vote) but in any case was something like 8 percentage points.
The swing among Latinos was, thus, about the same as the national swing. At least based on these data, the statement “Latinos are not swing voters” does not seem supported by the facts. Unless you also want to say that whites are not swing voters either.