• NBC/WSJ poll: Obama leads by 45 points with Latinos

    By Domenico Montanaro, NBC News Deputy Political Editor

     

    Hispanic voters continue to say they prefer President Obama by wide margins over Republican nominee Mitt Romney amid signs that the race is tightening among the broader electorate, according to new data in a NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll.

    Recommended: First Thoughts: Presidential race couldn't be tighter - how each one wins

    Obama leads Romney 70 percent to 25 percent among likely Latino voters (and 69 percent to 23 percent among registered voters), a slight uptick for Romney from the 70 percent to 25 percent lead the president held a month ago.

    Read the full poll results here

    But Latino enthusiasm has ticked up since last month, up from its lows earlier this cycle but still not yet on par with Latino enthusiasm for Obama in 2008.

    More Hispanics than last month said they are either a 9 or 10 (on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest) on a measure of their enthusiasm for this election. Sixty-eight percent of likely Latino voters rated their enthusiasm at that level, up from 59 percent last month. But that is off from the 76 percent who said they were in that highest-interest group at this time four years ago. And it is below the 76 percent who are 9s and 10s in the wider NBC/WSJ poll.

    NBC's Domenico Montanaro analyzes debate strategy for each candidate ahead of tonight's showdown in Boca Raton, FL. Plus, new polls continue to show a tight race.

    The debates appear to have had little impact with Latinos in the poll, which was conducted entirely after the second presidential debate. Just 14 percent said they are now more likely to vote for Romney while 48 percent said it made them more likely to vote for Obama, and 35 percent said it made no difference.

    A total of 13 percent of Latinos said they have already voted – either in person or by mail. Another 10 percent said they plan to vote before Election Day.

    Related: In foreign policy, both Obama and Romney face fiscal realities

    There were some drops for the president, however. His approval rating is still very strong at 66 percent, but it’s down from the sky-high 73 percent he enjoyed last month. On the economy, Obama’s approval declined slightly from 68 percent to 63 percent. And even his favorability saw a small decline from 74 percent positive last month to 69 percent this month.
     
    The problem for Romney, however, continues to involve a severe image problem with Hispanics. A solid majority – 57 percent – of Hispanic voters said they had a negative view of the former Massachusetts governor, while just a quarter – 26 percent – had a positive impression of Romney.

    After Monday's third and final debate there will be exactly two weeks before the election and all signs are pointing to a very tight race, including the latest NBC News/ WSJ poll. The Daily Rundown panel discusses.

    In fact, almost half – 45 percent – had a “very negative” impression of Romney, up from 35 percent last month.

    The NBC/WSJ poll, including the Hispanic oversample, was conducted from Oct. 17 to Oct. 20 and has a margin of error of +/- 6.8 percent among likely voters and +/- 5.7 percent among registered voters.

    EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated Obama's economic approval as declining from 66 percent to 61 percent. It was actually a decline from 68 percent to 63 percent.

  • Romney: 'This is a campaign about the 100 percent'

     

    By NBC's Garrett Haake

    Updated at 8:02 a.m. ET: MIAMI — Mitt Romney said his campaign is about "100 percent" of Americans as his campaign continued to work to contain the fallout from controversial comments he made at a private fundraiser in May.

    Romney, speaking Wednesday at a forum sponsored by Spanish-language broadcaster Univision, softened his tone in reaction to a question about his surreptitiously-recorded comments to donors, in which he dismissed 47 percent of Americans as not winnable because of their dependence on government.

    As both presidential candidates stump in battleground states, Mitt Romney tried to turn the page on a troubled few weeks with a message of inclusiveness at a town hall meeting in Florida. NBC's Peter Alexander reports.

    "First of all, this is a campaign about the 100 percent. And over the last several years, you’ve seen greater and greater divisiveness in this country. We had hoped to come back together but instead you've seen us pulled apart," Romney said. "I am concerned about the fact that over the past four years, life has become harder for Americans."

    Jim Young / Reuters

    Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney arrives at Univision and Facebook's "Meet the Candidates" Forum moderated by Maria Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos in Miami, Florida, September 19, 2012.

     

    That represented a softer, more inclusive tone for Romney, who dropped language he had used on Fox News and with Republican donors about the comments reflecting the role of government in society.

    Later at a rally at an exposition center in Miami, Romney evoked his father, whose bootstrapping history he regularly references on the campaign trail, as an example of someone who benefited from government help without becoming dependent.

    "My dad was born in Mexico of American parents living there. At age 5 or 6 there was a revolution. They came back to the United States, and my dad had to get help, financial help. The government helped his family be able to get on their feet again," Romney said. "By the way, that’s the way America works, we have great hearts; we care for people who have needs. We help get them back. We help lift them up but then they go back to their permanent lifestyle. We help people, we get them on their feet and they build a brighter future.”

    Romney also laughed off another controversial remark from the leaked tape, in which he told donors about how being a Latino himself might have helped his chances against President Barack Obama. Romney's father was born in Mexico, and a Univision moderator asked him if he was certain he wasn’t Hispanic.

    "I think for political purposes that might have helped me here at the University of Miami today," Romney deadpanned.

    The event marked a renewed effort by Romney to cut into Obama's sizable advantage with Latino voters. He was softer on immigration, health care and education issues, all the while attacking the president for failing to fulfill his campaign promises to the nation's fastest-growing demographic group.

    TODAY's Matt Lauer speaks with Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to the Romney campaign, about the candidate's recent controversies and how he has handled the steady drip of bad news.

    At the Spanish-language forum, Romney pledged a solution to what he called the nation's broken immigration system. He said he had no intention of "rounding up" the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants thought to be in the United States illegally while his plan takes shape.

    "I said I'm not in favor of a deportation, a mass deportation effort rounding up 12 million people and kicking them out of the country," Romney said. "I believe people make their own choices as to whether they want to go home and that's what I mean by self-deportation. People decide if they want to go back to the country of their origin and get in line legally to be able to come to this country."

    'Federal solution'
    Democrats have attacked Romney's "self-deportation" concept since the primary campaign, when Romney used immigration as an issue with which to attack his rivals from the right, essentially promising to make economic opportunity so scarce for illegal immigrants that they would leave the United States voluntarily.

    Before an almost exclusively Latino audience on the campus of the University of Miami, Romney defended his support for only one provision of a controversial Arizona immigration law and praised legal immigration as key to America's vitality.

    "One aspect of the Arizona law which I think is worthwhile to consider and be part of a federal solution is this idea of an employment verification system," Romney said when pressed on his past praise for the Arizona law. Romney said the law would not have been necessary if President Obama had followed through on promises to reform federal immigration laws in his first term.

    "The reason there is an Arizona law is because the federal government and specifically President Obama didn't solve the immigration problem when he came into office," Romney said.

    With polls consistently showing Romney trailing President Obama by a 2-to-1 margin among Latino voters, the outreach by the former Massachusetts governor here – aimed at all Latinos, but with a particular focus on the Cuban-American community here – is critical.

    That might be why Romney, who rarely mentions his Massachusetts health care reform law because of its similarities to the president's health care reform bill, embraced his connection to some of the law's most popular provisions here. Among Latinos, health care has been a key issue.

    "I have experience in health care reform," Romney said after vowing to repeal President Obama's healthcare reform law. "Now and then the president says I’m the grandfather of Obamacare. I don’t think he meant that as a compliment but I’ll take it. This was during my primary. We thought it might not be helpful. But I’ve actually been able to put in place a system that fit the needs of the people in my state. And I’m proud of the fact that in my state after our plan was put in place every child has insurance. Ninety-eight percent of adults have insurance, but we didn’t have to cut Medicare by $716 billion to do that."

    The Obama campaign quickly responded to the events, accusing Romney of offering only platitudes to the Hispanic community.

    "Mitt Romney is wrong on issues of importance to the Hispanic community. On critical issues, he continued to refuse to answer any of the tough questions or provide any specifics on what he’d do as president," Obama campaign spokesperson Lis Smith said in a statement. "We are just two weeks away from the first presidential debate, where the American people will demand more than vague answers and empty platitudes. It’s time for Mitt Romney to come clean and get specific about his policies.”

  • Rubio decries unfinished business in speech to Latinos

    By NBC's Andrew Rafferty

     

    WASHINGTON -- Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Wednesday asserted that none of the major issues facing the United States have been solved during Barack Obama's presidency.

    "This nation and this political process has not solved one single major issue in the last three and a half to four years. In fact, it’s been incapable of even passing a budget," said Rubio in a speech here to the Latino Coalition Economic Summit. "The single largest organization in the world -- a $3.8 trillion endeavor called the United States government -- has not had a budget in almost four years."

    The potential vice presidential pick has gone on the attack against the president recently. During a high-profile GOP fundraiser in South Carolina over the weekend, he called Obama the most divisive figure in modern American politics.  Though today he did not use the president's name, he delivered a toned-down version of that same message in front of a bloc of voters, Latinos, that will be key in the November election.

    But Rubio's harshest rhetoric was aimed at the body he is a member of, the Senate. He even acknowledged that, despite taking office with high hopes, nothing has changed since he entered the high chamber.

    “I ran because I was frustrated by the political process. Nothing has happened over the last year and a half to change that frustration, unfortunately," he said. "Too often times, in the United States Senate especially, most of the votes we take are nothing but messaging points. Bills are brought to the floor by people and they’re not going pass...The only thing that’s being done in the Senate these days is creating material for television commercials in the fall. And it's sad."

    Earlier in the afternoon it was presumptive nominee Mitt Romney who addressed the group, delivering a speech promoting education reform.

    Rubio applauded the former Massachusetts governor's plans for reform, saying: "There will be no new jobs in the 21st century for people who do not have advanced education of some form. We have to provide access to that as well as affordability.  And I'm glad that the nominee of my party has taken the lead in that regard."

    It is of little surprise why Republican politicians are paying such close attention to Hispanic voters in 2012. A new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll showed Obama with a 34-point lead over Romney among Latino voters.

    It is a big reason why the junior senator from Florida has generated so much buzz about joining the presidential ticket. But a Quinnipiac poll released today shows that Rubio adds only two points to Romney's showing in the Sunshine State.

    Though Rubio did open his speech in Spanish, little else was specifically tailored for the Latino audience. Much of his speech was focused on the broken ways of Washington and examples of what he believes are missed opportunities for job creation -- like building the Keystone Pipeline.

    'These are the kinds of things that historians write about 100 years from now when they discuss the decline of a civilization of a nation -- ridiculous decisions that were made because of politics, not because of policy," he said.

  • Obama camp launches Latino push, hits Romney

    By NBC's Carrie Dann

     

    With both sides eying one of the fastest-growing blocs in the American electorate, President Barack Obama's re-election campaign on Wednesday announced an aggressive outreach to Latino voters, pushing Democrats' reform proposals and casting Mitt Romney as "extreme" on immigration issues.

    Not only do Latinos account for 16 percent of the total U.S. population, they are also a formidable presence in many of the swing states like Colorado, and Arizona that could make the final difference in November. Obama campaign deputy manager Stephanie Cutter discusses.

    The new "Latinos for Obama" effort includes on-the-ground volunteer and staff outreach as well as Spanish-language ads slated to air in heavily Hispanic swing states Colorado, Florida, and Nevada.

    Backers of the president hope that Romney's embrace of Arizona's controversial immigration law as well as his pledge to oppose the DREAM Act -- which would offer a path to citizenship for some children who were brought to the United States illegally at an early age -- will mobilize Latinos against the presumptive Republican nominee.

    "This election is an opportunity in this country for the Latino community to send a message," said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., on a conference call announcing the new push. "The reality is that we look at this as the civil rights issue of our time."

    Opposition to the DREAM Act is "insulting" to Hispanic families, added San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who -- echoed by campaign manager Jim Messina -- labeled Romney's positions "the most extreme nominee that the Republican party has ever had on immigration."

    Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has pushed for a "conservative alternative" to the DREAM Act, which would allow some young illegal immigrants to stay in the United States but would prevent them from attaining citizenship. Messina said Wednesday that the president has been focused on reviving the original legislation, which failed in the Senate by a narrow margin late in 2010, but added that the White House would work to "find common ground" with those on the other side of the aisle. 

    The Republican National Committee announced its own Latino-focused program earlier this week, launching community outreach directors in Florida, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia.  A key part of their message, said chairman Reince Priebus, is to highlight the impact the nation's sluggish economy has on the Hispanic community.

    Hispanic voters favored Obama over Republican John McCain by an almost 2-1 margin in the 2008 presidential election. Nationally, the Hispanic vote in 2008 rose to 9 percent of the electorate, up from 8 percent in 2004, but turnout jumped by five points in swing states Colorado and Nevada and by nine points in New Mexico.