By Pilar Marrero – Pilar.marrero@laopinion.com | 2011-12-8
Full Results From December Poll Posted Here
LOS ANGELES, CA. – Because of the conservative philosophy of Latinos in the U.S. regarding family and religion, in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan said: “Hispanics are Republicans. They just don’t know it yet.” Today’s Republicans are still repeating this as if it were a sacrament. Nevertheless, a new poll of Latino voters by impreMedia and Latino Decisions revealed that when it comes to voting, the majority (53%) of these citizens said their own religion does not have much influence on which candidate they choose, while 40% said it does.
Although the numbers appear balanced, they become clearer when broken down: Only 23% said their religion has a “big impact,” while 17% said the candidate’s religion has a “small” impact. The only exception is among Latinos who are part of the GOP, since 47% said their religion does have a big impact on their election choices.
“It’s always been said that Latinos have a conflict between their religion and their political tendencies. That they’re usually more progressive on economic policy but conservative on social issues,” said Matt Barreto, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and advisor to Latino Decisions.
However, Barreto said the poll reflects no such conflict: “Religion and social and moral values are not among their priorities when they make their political and election calculations.”
The poll confirmed that Latino voters place little or no importance on traditional moral issues when voting: 75% think the economy, jobs and taxes are much more important in politics. Only 14% said moral or social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage or family values are more important.
Ironically, this is true for many categories of Latino voters, including Democrats, Republicans and independents; U.S. born and naturalized citizens; various socioeconomic levels; those who attend church weekly and those who are “born again.” Economic issues rule.
On the other hand, there are moral issues on which Latinos agree, and which can incidentally have an impact on their political stance—and immigration is one of them. “In this poll, there’s a clear moral attitude of support regarding churches and religious leaders helping undocumented immigrants even if it’s in conflict with the law,” said Ricardo Ramírez, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame. “For them, helping the undocumented is a moral issue and could even be a religious one.”
A majority (66%) of Latino voters think churches should support the undocumented even if it challenges laws, and only 21% think they should not help them. Naturalized Latino citizens tend to have stronger positions on this: 75% said the church should help. Among U.S. born Latinos, this support is lower, at 58%. But even 66% of Republican Latinos and 66% of independents have this opinion. In general, these voters tend to want their churches and election politics to remain very separate: overwhelming majorities of these voters think no religious leader, minister or rabbi should tell them which candidate to vote for.
The President’s Religion and Mormons
When asked about the religions of President Obama and one of his main Republican rivals, Mitt Romney, many of these voters had no idea which religion either one of them belongs to: 48% said they did not know the president’s religion and 58% said the same about Romney. “At this point, Latinos don’t seem to be very interested in the religion of these candidates,” said Barreto.
Interestingly, 12% of Latinos said Obama is a Muslim, and only 25% correctly said Romney is a Mormon or belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Something else the poll revealed is that Latino voters have a very vague idea of what Mormonism is. This issue will probably be relevant during the general election if Romney is the GOP’s candidate, although this is yet to be determined. Of respondents, 58% are not familiar with Mormonism, 13% are very familiar and 27% are somewhat familiar. About 40% said, incorrectly, that Mormonism is not a Christian religion and only 31% said that it is—while 27% said they do not know.
Although religion does not seem to have a positive effect on Latinos’ vote, it is not clear whether it might have a negative effect on Latino Republican or independent voters.
“Apparently, Mormonism is not defined in the minds of these voters. This could be good or bad for the Republican candidate if it’s Romney, because this issue will surely come up in the race,” said Michael Jones-Correa, a professor of government at Cornell University. “If there’s more definition of what the Mormon religion is, it could be more beneficial or detrimental for Romney; it depends.”
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Simply standing tall can speak volumes. According to a 2011 study published in Psychological Science, so-called “posture expansiveness”-where you open up the body and occupy space-not only makes you appear more confident and authoritative, you actually think and act that way. Posture matters even more than your title: It gives you a sense of power, no matter where you line up on the totem pole, researchers say.
Such a terrible terrible event. I believe the advanced warning people got saved more lives. I offer my condolences to the families of those who were lost during this horrible event.
The tsunami formed after a magnitude-8.0 earthquake struck near the town of Lata, on Santa Cruz in Temotu, the easternmost province in the Solomons, about a 3-hour flight from the capital, Honiara. Temotu has a population of around 30,000.
The razing comes a week after images of the house circulated widely online in China, triggering a flurry of domestic and foreign media reports about the latest “nail house,” as buildings that remain standing as their owners resist development are called.
This article is fraught with two major presuppositions that have to be challenged.
1. That people should automatically divorce their religion or religious principles when considering candidates, policies and ideology. People who are not “religious” are not asked to divorce their moral belief system or principles to inform their politics, nor should they be. But just because someone’s moral belief system is labeled organized religion they must now leave theirs at the door. This is absurd. Everyone’s moral beliefs informs their politics, for politics is simply one’s moral beliefs applied and lived out in the public square.
2. That race informs politics. On its face this is racist. Race and our ethnicity are not a choice as we we’re born into them. Very different from principles and beliefs as they are a choice. Modern liberalism and its hand-maiden the media keep fanning the flames of identity politics. They’re trying to condition people to think not according to objective morality or thought out principles that individuals can choose for themselves, but according to racial identity and then imply that is what should inform their political views. Talk about polarization and division Just like religion, political views are a choice and we’re not born into them.
Refreshing to hear that rational decision making is alive and well. This does not mean that because a large portion of Latin Americans do not use religion as a litmus test for elected officials, they are any less ethical (defined as how you deal with others and how you evaluate your personal standards of behavior) or moral (defined as what the larger society determines to be right and wrong). Ethics has no particular association with religion.