September 20, 2013
Unit 2
Mitt Romney has had some time to reflect on his presidential campaign that ended last November. He has finally spoken out and said that his greatest fault in his campaign was neglecting to appeal to the Hispanic voters. He said that the Hispanic voters did not understand that he wanted to reform immigration. He lost the Hispanic vote by 40% in November because Hispanics did not understand the Republican Party's stand on immigration. He said that he needed to get his position on immigration out better through Hispanic TV and outreach. Republicans have been trying to get the Hispanic voters on their side. 50% of Hispanics identify with the Democratic party while only 15% identify with the Republican party.
I think that this relates a lot to our current unit. We are studying the reasons why voters vote for certain candidates. This article shows that if you don't appeal to a certain group of people, you can lose an election. I agree with Romney in his reflection. I'm not in the hispanic community, but I feel like he didn't get his positions on certain issues out to a lot of different people. I think he appealed to the group I identify myself with, but others misunderstood his positions.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/27/hispanic-outreach-mitt-romneys-largest-error-from-2012/?hpt=hp_t2
Trying to uphold a political ideology while trying to get votes is very tough especially for a presidential candidate. There are so many different groups you need to appeal to without losing those already on your side. I completely agree that Romney should have made an effort to get the hispanic voters, but that is probably more complicated than I might think. He could have lost other voters by focusing on the hispanic voters. I agree though, that if he would have made his position better known (assuming he wanted to reform immigration) to the hispanic voters he would have got more votes.
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