Did Tancredo cost Buck the senate seat?

Eighty-one percent of Latino voters in Colorado voted for Michael Bennet. Split the Latino vote down the middle between Bennet and Republican Ken Buck and Buck wins easily. Even if Buck had only received 30 percent of the Latino vote, he would have won the election.

As it was, Buck barely out-polled gubernatorial candidate and anti-immigration hardliner Tom Tancredo among Hispanics.

Roughly 10 percent of voters in Colorado are Latino, according to Latino Decisions, a non-partisan polling and opinion research firm run by two West Coast political science professors.

Mike Melanson, John Hickenlooper’s campaign manager, discussed the Hispanic vote and immigration as a political issue in a conference call earlier this week. He said the Hickenlooper campaign saw an uptick in early voting among Hispanics this year — the first time he had seen that in a non-presidential year. He said Hispanic voters are a very strong element in Colorado and that it was a mistake by Republicans to focus on immigration in a negative way.

“Republicans have an option – continue to let extremist leaders define their stance on immigration or come to the table and present a clear solution to the immigration issue,” Clarissa Martinez De Castro said in a press release Thursday. She is the director of immigration and national campaigns at the National Council of La Raza. “Latinos in 2010 reaffirmed their influential role in American politics,” she added.   – More -