124 PART TwO • THE POlITICS OF AMERICAn dEMOCRACy
Muslim American immigrants
and their descendants make up
an interesting category.^4 In 2000,
a majority of Muslim Americans of
Middle Eastern ancestry voted for
Republican George W. Bush because
they shared his cultural conserva-
tism. By 2012, the issues of Muslim
civil liberties and discrimination
against Muslims had turned Islamic
voters into one of the nation’s most
Democratic blocs.The Hispanic Vote
The diversity among Hispanic
Americans has resulted in differing
political behavior. The majority of
Hispanic Americans vote Democratic.
Cuban Americans, however, are often
Republican. Most Cuban Americans
left Cuba because of Fidel Castro’s
Communist regime. As in the example
of the Vietnamese, anticommunism
leads to political conservatism. By
2012, however, increasing numbers
of young Cuban Americans were sup-
porting the Democrats.
In 2004, Republican presiden-
tial candidate George W. Bush may
have received almost 40 percent of
the Latino vote. Since his days as
Texas governor, Bush had envisioned
creating a stronger long-term Republican coalition by adding Hispanics. Indeed, Latino
voters appeared to show considerable sympathy for Bush’s campaign appeals based on
religious and family values and patriotism.
In 2008, however, Barack Obama won more than two-thirds of the Hispanic vote. Why
did Hispanic support for the Republicans fall so sharply? In a word: immigration. Bush favored
a comprehensive immigration reform that would have granted unauthorized immigrants
(also known as illegal or undocumented immigrants) a path to citizenship. Most Republicans
in Congress, however, refused to support Bush on this issue and instead called for a hard
line against unauthorized immigration. The harsh rhetoric of some Republicans on this issue
convinced many Latinos that the Republicans were hostile to Hispanic interests.
In 2012, according to a Latino poll, Obama’s support among Hispanics reached 75 per-
cent, an all-time high. At the same time, Hispanics were a growing share of the voting popula-
tion—10 percent, up from 9 percent in 2008 and 8 percent in 2004. These trends were widelyA latino woman and her eighteen-month-old daughter march to the White
House in support of immigration reform. How is the daughter acquiring political values
by attending a rally with her mother? (Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Shutterstock.com)- About one-third of U.S. Muslims actually are African Americans whose ancestors have been in this
country for a long time. In terms of political preferences, African American Muslims are more likely
to resemble other African Americans than Muslim immigrants from the Middle East.
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