Problems polling hispanics

In response to a poll showing Obama ahead by 2% in Arizona a few days ago, Nate Silver tweeted this: "Although AZ poll very likely an outlier, one scary thing for Romney is that it included Spanish-language interviews. There's some evidence that polls which don't conduct Spanish-language interviews lowball Dem vote among Hispanics." I did remember seeing some discrepancy between polling and actual results in the Hispanic heavy southwest over the last few years, so I looked to see how the polls held up here the last few years. I used RCP's polling averages and only included the states that had been polled heavily between Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada.

Arizona:
2008 Presidential- D+ 5% (Although it being McCain's home state might've had something to do with that)

Colorado:
2008 Presidential- R+ 3.5%
2008 House-4- R+ 5%
2010 Senate- R+ 3.9%
2010 Governor- R+ 9.9% (Although the three person contest between Hickenlooper, Tancredo, and Maes might've had something to do with this.

Nevada:
2008 Presidential- R+ 6%
2008 House-3- R+ 6%
2010 Senate- R+ 8.3%
2010 Governor- R+ 4.9%

New Mexico:
2008 Presidential- R+ 7.8%
2008 Senate- R+ 7.8%
2008 House-1- R+ 9.5%
2010 Governor- R+ 3.5%

Considering the polling in these heavily polled states is much worse than the national average it suggests that there is a problem polls have with polling Hispanics which these states are all heavy in. If you take the average of the misses in each of these states and add it to the poll averages in the states this election cycle it would put Nevada and Colorado out of reach for Romney and make New Mexico as blue as Massachusetts. If you consider Colorado and Nevada as blue states and if you give Obama Ohio where his polling has held up despite his deflation after the debate, then Obama would win without winning Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Wisconsin. If these polling trends continue this year, it could make it very hard for Romney to win an election tied in the popular vote.

I think you and Silver are selling Hispanics short by your assumption that they can't be adequately polled in English. If you have to be able to read, write and speak English to become a citizen and only citizens vote what's the need for Spanish speaking pollsters? Do Chinese have to be polled in Chinese? Asians are the second fastest growing minority population in the US. Do we have to have Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese pollsters too?

jerry7 said:

I think you and Silver are selling Hispanics short by your assumption that they can't be adequately polled in English. If you have to be able to read, write and speak English to become a citizen and only citizens vote what's the need for Spanish speaking pollsters? Do Chinese have to be polled in Chinese? Asians are the second fastest growing minority population in the US. Do we have to have Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese pollsters too?

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For one thing you don't need to read, write, or speak English to be born an American citizen. For those other races they might need to have their own language polled to get accurate results if they made up a significant percentage of the population. It just looks like there has been a large discrepancy in these Hispanic heavy Southwest states that there hasn't been in the rest of the country.

Anagram said:

For one thing you don't need to read, write, or speak English to be born an American citizen. For those other races they might need to have their own language polled to get accurate results if they made up a significant percentage of the population. It just looks like there has been a large discrepancy in these Hispanic heavy Southwest states that there hasn't been in the rest of the country.

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Do you really think that there is a population significant enough to effect the accuracy of a poll that has been born in the US and can't speak English by the time their 18 yeats old? That's absurd.

jerry7 said:

Do you really think that there is a population significant enough to effect the accuracy of a poll that has been born in the US and can't speak English by the time their 18 yeats old? That's absurd.

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Well there is certainly some problem with conventional polling that causes them to underestimate the impact of Hispanic voting in these states. English polling could be part of it. Even if they speak English, how likely are they to go through a poll in a second language when they don't have to?