Utah Latinos backed Kerry

Utah is clearly a "red state" on election maps because voters here gave overwhelming support to President Bush on Nov. 2. But it appears the state's Latinos voted in a hue of blue.

About 54 percent of Utah Latino voters favored Sen. John Kerry, according to an exit poll conducted by Brigham Young University. Overall, 71 percent of Utah voters chose Bush. But Utah's Hispanics represent only a small percentage of Utah voters.

Utah Latinos also tended to vote with Democrats on other issues. They supported Democratic gubernatorial candidate Scott Matheson Jr. over now Republican Gov.-elect Jon Huntsman Jr.; on the politically charged Amendment 3 to ban same-sex marriage, just over half voted "no." It earned 66 percent of the vote statewide.

The BYU exit poll does show a slight increase in Republican votes. Bush gained about 42 percent of the state's Latino vote this year. In 2000, Bush garnered only about 34 percent.

Quin Monson, assistant political science professor at Brigham Young University, said the apparent shift to Republicans is in line with some national exit polls conducted around the country that showed Bush did much better in 2004, and that newly registered voters were about evenly split between Bush and Kerry.

A new comprehensive national exit poll of Latino voters suggests, however, that Latino voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Kerry. Kerry garnered 64.6 percent of the votes and Bush 34.2 percent, according to a comprehensive national exit poll of Latino voters conducted by the William C. Velasquez Institute.

That is almost exactly the same difference as the 2000 election, when two-thirds of Latino voters cast their ballots for Al Gore.

"That makes sense," said Henry Flores, the dean of graduate studies at Saint Mary's University. "There was no reason to drive the Latino vote one way or another."

The study, sponsored by Hispanic Action and No Borders Inc., used a sample of 777 Latino voters from 40 randomly chosen precincts in 11 states. To be included in the sample, the precinct had to have at least 5 percent Latinos and a minimum of 50 Latino voters. The sample also factored in urban Latinos, as well as those living in suburbs and elsewhere.

The poll found the Latino vote was not a total loss for Bush. He got 44 percent of the elderly vote, 59 percent of the Cuban-American vote, 52 percent of families with household income above $100,000 and 51 percent of the Protestant vote.

The Velasquez poll shows that among young voters, who comprised most of the new Latino voters, Kerry won with more than 76 percent of the vote.

The newly registered Latino voters were predominantly young and were not newly naturalized citizens, the poll found.