If the latest polls among likely Latino voters are any indication, a high Latino voter turnout Tuesday could deliver four key states and perhaps the presidential election to President Barack Obama.
With Election Day less than 24 hours away, the latest poll from Latino Decisions released Monday - one of 11 such polls - projects that President Obama is well ahead of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney among Latino voters, and is in fact poised to win a record amount of Hispanic voters in Tuesday's election.
According to the poll, if the election were held today, 73 percent of Latino voters polled told Latinos Decisions that they would vote for Obama, a sizeable 49 percent higher than the 24 percent of Hispanics who would vote for Romney.
With such a projected lead among Hispanics who are voting or have voted, Latino Decisions projects that their final poll findings could be significant to the presidential race, especially when it comes to tipping critical swing states with high Latino populations such as Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and Virginia after the ballots are cast.
All of those states have been in tightly contested races in public opinion polls in October.
"With 11 weeks of tracking, we are headed towards a record level of Latino votes for a Democratic presidential candidate," said Latino Decisions' Principal Investigator Matt Barreto. "If Latinos turnout at the high rates we are expecting, they could deliver Nevada, Colorado, Florida and Virginia to Obama."
In Nevada, as USA Today reported, even the race for U.S. Senate between Republican Sen. Dean Heller and Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley could be contingent upon how many Hispanic voters turn out at the polls Tuesday; a factor which aided Obama when he won the state in 2008.
According to Business Insider reports, if Latino Decisions numbers do stand and Obama wins by a 73 percent margin with Latinos, it would mark the biggest landslide victory for a U.S. presidential candidate among that demographic in Democratic history. The previous benchmark, a 72 percent victory, was won by Bill Clinton in 1996.
Latino Decisions is a political opinion research firm that studies decisions according to Latino voting demographics.
The poll, which has a 5.6 percent margin of error, marked the 11th and final weekly poll of Latino registered voters tracked by the firm. The polls were conducted with 300 completed interviews with registered Latino voters across all 50 states, in either English or Spanish.
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