At least at first, recently naturalized voters tend to vote Democratic. Immigration reform could be bonanza for Dems

The immigration proposal pending in Congress would transform the nation’s political landscape for a generation or more — pumping as many as 11 million new Hispanic voters into the electorate a decade from now in ways that, if current trends hold, would produce an electoral bonanza for Democrats and cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily.

Beneath the philosophical debates about amnesty and border security, there are brass-tacks partisan calculations driving the thinking of lawmakers in both parties over comprehensive immigration reform, which in its current form offers a pathway to citizenship — and full voting rights — for a group of undocumented residents that roughly equals the population of Ohio, the nation’s seventh-largest state.


If these people had been on the voting rolls in 2012 and voted along the same lines as other Hispanic voters did last fall, President Barack Obama’s relatively narrow victory last fall would have been considerably wider, a POLITICO analysis showed.

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Key swing states that Obama fought tooth and nail to win — like Florida, Colorado and Nevada — would have been comfortably in his column. And the president would have come very close to winning Arizona.

Republican Mitt Romney, by contrast, would have lost the national popular vote by 7 percentage points, 53 percent to 46 percent, instead of the 4-point margin he lost by in 2012, and would have struggled even to stay competitive in GOP strongholds like Texas, which he won with 57 percent of the vote.

The analysis is based on U.S. Census and Pew Research Center estimates of illegal immigrant populations by state, and presidential exit polls showing how Obama and Romney performed among Latinos.

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Extrapolating 2012 voting trends to elections several cycles in the future is an inherently speculative exercise. Under a 13-year path to citizenship, this would mean most undocumented immigrants could join the voting rolls in the 2028 presidential election (though the proposed 5-year timeline for citizenship under the DREAM Act and for agricultural workers would start the process even earlier than that). But it is one that highlights the political sword hanging over Republicans as they consider immigration reform with a path to citizenship, an idea that is already deeply unpopular with many red-state constituencies.

To support the measure virtually guarantees millions of new Democratic voters. But for Republicans to oppose immigration reform invites hostility among Hispanic-Americans who already are punishing the GOP and imperiling its electoral prospects.

( WATCH: McCain, Schumer on Hispanic vote)

This reality, say many Republican strategists, gives the party no long-term alternative but to welcome the new voters and hope this allows the party to compete for Hispanic voters in ways that are closer to how President George W. Bush performed in 2004. National exit polls that year showed he won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. Some analysts have questioned this data, but there is little doubt that Bush performed significantly better with this group than Romney, who got just 27 percent.

( Also on POLITICO: Grassley, Schumer trade fireworks on immigration)

If Republicans do nothing to repair their relationships with current and future Latino voters, “we certainly won’t be a national political party anymore,” said GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, a top adviser to John McCain in 2008.

If one adds 11 million new Hispanic voters after immigration reform but applies 2004 percentages, the damage to Republicans is real but much less severe: Romney would have still won border states Texas and Arizona, albeit by smaller margins, while Obama would have held other Latino-heavy swing states like Nevada and Florida by slightly larger margins than the ones he did win by.

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The POLITICO analysis is intended to reflect the GOP’s broader dilemma on immigration issues; it is not meant to be specifically predictive. There is no way of knowing how many of the estimated 11 million undocumented workers would ultimately succeed in gaining citizenship, nor any certainty of what their turnout percentages would be once they gain voting rights.

Republican strategists say many Hispanics have characteristics — strong Catholicism, and small-business backgrounds — that could make them natural targets for GOP messaging if the party can get past the immigration issue. Historically, however, there is no mistaking the reality that most Hispanics trend Democratic during their early years of voting.

To realize those gains, Democrats would have to succeed at the colossal challenge of registering and turning out newly naturalized citizens.

While there’s still little research specifically about Latin American immigrants’ voting behavior once they become citizens, research on other immigrant groups shows that they tend to turn out and vote at much lower rates than U.S.-born citizens.

“It’s one thing to register these people, and it’s another to turn them out to vote,” said Jill Hanauer, president of the Democratic group Project New America. “Newly registered, newly eligible Hispanic voters have much lower turnout propensity.”

At least at first, recently naturalized voters tend to vote Democratic — though more and more of them identify as independents or aren’t registering with either party.

“When you look at any immigrant group that’s lower on the socioeconomic ladder, they’ve traditionally voted Democratic,” said Schmidt. “But we can certainly win a percentage of them … that needs to be higher than 30 percent.”

To illustrate the potential voting shifts once immigrants are able to vote, look at Texas, Arizona and Georgia. The total undocumented immigrant population in each of those states exceeds Romney’s margin of victory.

Texas, where the unauthorized immigrant population is second only to California’s, had an estimated 1.65 million undocumented immigrants in 2010, according to statistics from the Pew Hispanic Center. Romney won the state in 2012 by just under 1.3 million votes.

In Arizona, Romney won by 212,000 votes — and there are an estimated 400,000 undocumented immigrants in the state as of 2010.

Even Georgia, which isn’t a border state and doesn’t immediately come to mind when thinking of immigrant-heavy states, would be affected: Georgia had an estimated 425,000 undocumented immigrants in 2010, per Pew Hispanic Center’s estimates, and Romney won there by 308,000 votes.

If all those immigrants had voted in 2012 and President Obama had won 71 percent of them — the percentage he won among Latinos nationally — he would have come in less than 50,000 votes short in Arizona, within about a half-million votes of winning Texas and 125,000 votes shy in Georgia.

In competitive states that went for Obama in 2012 — such as Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico — additional Latino voters would have increased his margins significantly.

Still, there may be reason to hope for Republicans down the line, particularly if they’re perceived as proactively working to reform the immigration system.

“Undocumented immigrants are aware of politics, but they don’t really have any party allegiance yet, because they’re not in the regular system,” said Matt Barreto, pollster at Latino Decisions. “When asked [about their political party] in surveys, huge majorities just say independent, none or other.”

Polling by Latino Decisions found Latino voters would be willing to vote for a Republican candidate if the party had taken a leading role in the immigration reform process — a trend that could translate to new Latino citizens as well.

Of currently registered Latino voters who voted for Obama in 2012, almost half of them — 43 percent — said they’d be willing to vote for a GOP candidate if the party takes a “leadership role” in passing immigration reform.

“Past analysis suggested that immigrants are more likely to be Democrats, but that’s because the Republican Party has been spewing anti-immigrant rhetoric,” Barreto said. “So I would say everything in the past is not relevant if the Republican Party decides to change its image and its rhetoric.”

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) agreed, saying Republicans can improve their standing among Latinos if they actively participate in the reform process.

“Immigration has been used by Democrats as a very effective tool to try to brand Republicans as anti-immigrant,” he said. “I think we have to take it off the table so that the Republican Party can start talking about the issues where we do very, very well and I’m convinced that we will do very, very well.”

And, as some Republicans have argued repeatedly, the GOP message is one that should, at its core, appeal to Latino voters.

“It’s always been the case with immigrant groups that when, they move into their second and third generations, when they have the chance to move up the socioeconomic ladder to become more entrepreneurial … that should open them, and has opened past immigrant groups, to the Republican message,” said Schmidt.

These changes are far in the future: Newly naturalized citizens won’t even start phasing into the electorate for several more election cycles. The discussions about a path to citizenship call for a 13-year process, which would mean both parties have a very long time to prepare for the influx of new voters.

“These voters are going to enter the electorate a very, very long time from now,” Barreto said. “So that means nothing is going to be immediate.”

Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.