The Swamp: Hispanic voters, many who favored Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries, are now strongly supporting Barack Obama over John McCain, Gallup reports.
A new poll shows registered Hispanic voters prefer Obama over McCain by 59 percent to 29 percent.
However, the smaller group of Hispanic voters who are Republican show more support for McCain. Hispanic voters with conservative views are about evenly divided between the two candidates.
Older Hispanics showed slightly more favor toward McCain, than younger Hispanic voters.
While Hispanics generally preferred Hillary Clinton to Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, a solid majority of Hispanics have consistently backed Obama against McCain in general-election trial heats. Obama has led McCain by about a 2-to-1 margin since Gallup began tracking general-election voting preferences in early March.
Gallup has interviewed more than 4,000 Hispanic registered voters during this time period. An analysis of candidate support by subgroup within the U.S. Hispanic electorate reveals that many of the well-established divisions in this year's campaign -- such as the gender gap and the marriage gap -- are weak or nonexistent among Hispanic voters.
Rather, Hispanics of differing demographic backgrounds all tend to solidly support Obama. It thus appears that there isn't much beyond a shared Hispanic ethnicity or identity that explains Hispanic voting patterns.
Perhaps the only exceptions to this general pattern come among the minority of Hispanic voters who identify themselves as Republicans (18%) or who say they have conservative political views (36%). McCain leads Obama among Hispanic Republicans, and is about even with him among Hispanic conservatives.
