Mitt Romney is pretty darn good at being white. And apparently it’s paying off.
The Washington Post notes that despite the Republican challenger’s dismal polling among Latino voters — down to Obama 40-50 points — the governor is surging among whites.
He may boast 60 percent of the white vote in next month’s election, a caucasian dominance not seen since Ronald Reagan in 1984. It all adds up to a potential victory, writes the Post’s Aaron Blake:
Given how small the Latino vote remains, the difference between losing it by 36 points — as John McCain did in 2008 — and losing it by 45 points — a worst-case scenario for Romney — amounts to about a 1 percent overall shift in the national race.
Meanwhile, if Romney won the white vote by 22 percent — a 10-point improvement over McCain — that would gain him 7 percent of the national vote over McCain and essentially even out the national popular vote.