Presidential Polls 2012: Obama Leads Among Latinos, But Dips Among Hispanic Evangelicals and Protestants, According to Survey

President Barack Obama is leading widely over Mitt Romney among likely Latino voters, but there may be some divisions among Hispanics belonging to differing religious groups, a new survey says.

According to the poll, released Thursday by the Pew Hispanic Center-a nonpartisan research group that collects data on the U.S. Hispanic population-among a survey of 903 Latino registered voters, "Latino registered voters support Obama over Romney by more than three-to-one" by a margin of 69 percent to 21 percent favoring the president.

"Among all Latinos, you're seeing some very strong support for the president," Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, told Bloomberg News in a telephone interview.

However, upon closer analysis, Obama's lead among Hispanics drops when going outside the Catholic population of 401 Hispanics voters polled by the center, favored Obama over Romney by 73 percent to 19 percent. Among 291 Protestant Latinos sampled, only 55 percent of them favored Obama, while 33 percent supported Romney. Obama's lead dipped five points lower to only 50 percent approval among 204 Evangelical Hispanic voters.

Among 150 religiously unaffiliated Latinos, Obama was widely leading by 82 percent while only 7 percent of that group favored Romney.

Latinos polled also strongly favored the Democratic party by 70 percent, the polls finds, while only 22 percent supported the GOP. That number jumped to 71 percent favorability towards Democrats among Catholic Hispanic voters.   However, the Democrats drop by 15 percentage points to only 56 percent approval among Protestant Latinos-with 21 percent of them favoring the Republican party-and dipped by four points to 52 percent of Latino Evangelicals that support the blue party while 36 percent of that group were with or favored the GOP.

Again, the Democrats' lead among religiously unaffiliated Hispanics surged to 81 percent, while only 10 percent were for the Republicans.

As the Huffington Post points out, there are at least 23.7 million registered Latino voters in the country-or 11 percent of the popular vote.

And with Hispanics comprising at least 14 percent of voters in key battleground states like Florida, Colorado, and Nevada, the Latino vote will likely play a crucial role in determining who will emerge as Commander in Chief after the dust settles from the tightly-fought Nov. 6 election.