Once again, it's Fantasyland over on GOP-TV following Donald Trump's Nevada caucus win. Here's Eric Bolling on Bill-O's show this Friday evening, pretending that Trump winning over a hundred or two Republican caucus goers translates into him winning over Latino voters nationwide:
BILL O'REILLY (HOST): This is all about coalitions, the presidential race, not the primary. Primary's about emotion as we said. But the presidential race, what Mrs. Clinton is counting on and what Mr. Trump is going to have to have to go in and destroy, is African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, liberal women, and suburban housewives all coming together and voting for Hillary.
Some of the numbers, the numbers are pretty interesting. Registered among Hispanic Americans, Democratic Party 56 percent, 27 percent independent. Just 14 percent of Hispanic Americans are registered Republicans, and it's lower in the black precincts. Lower. So Trump has to go in, he has to get -- he said, "Well Hispanics like me." Right? Trump has said Hispanics like him.
GERALDO RIVERA: After he won the small Nevada caucus.
O'REILLY: All right. This is favorability among Hispanic Americans. Bernie Sanders, 19 percent. Hillary Clinton, 39 percent favorable among Hispanics. Marco Rubio, 8 percent favorable. Donald Trump, 7 percent. Ted Cruz, 7 percent. If Trump gets the nomination, he has a lot of work to do.
ERIC BOLLING: A lot of work to do but he -- again, what he said last night in the debate was when Hillary Clinton's name came up in that exchange with Marco Rubio, he said, "I haven't gotten to her yet. I haven't hit her yet."
O'REILLY: Oh, it's going to be bloody and everybody knows.
BOLLING: Because he won't hold back. Look, he already showed his hand with that, as Geraldo pointed out accurately, when that started to bubble up, when Hillary Clinton started --
O'REILLY: He whacked it, right?
BOLLING: Started to call him a misogynist or whatever she was calling him. Boom, right at Bill, and they just cowered in the corner. And he won't be afraid to do it again.
O'REILLY: He'll do worse.
BOLLING: You're right about one thing though. The Latino vote is going to be, I think, the decider in a general election. If he does anywhere near what he's capable of doing, we saw in Nevada, I know Geraldo thinks it's small sample, double the size ever in the history of Nevada caucus.
O'REILLY: Well he has to tailor a message for Hispanics.
BOLLING: If he does -- if he hits around 40 percent, he can win that.
Five Thirty-Eight's Nate Silver and Harry Enten break down the math here:
Did Trump win Hispanics in Nevada? You can be sure that Trump will tell us he did! There was a lot of nerd-fighting over who won the Hispanic vote in the Democratic caucuses in Nevada, and we suspect there will be some over the Republican caucuses as well. Indeed, the entrance poll had Trump beating Rubio 45 percent to 28 percent among Hispanics.
But keep in mind that the sample size on that result is somewhere between 100 and 200 people. That means the margin of sampling error for the Hispanic subgroup is near +/- 10 percentage points (or even higher). Perhaps more importantly, just 8 percent of Republican voters were Hispanic (or 1 percent of the Nevadan Hispanic population), and they are not politically representative of the larger Hispanic community.
And from USA Today: Poll: Trump will struggle with Hispanic voters:
But nationwide, 81% of Hispanics have an unfavorable view of the real estate mogul and only 16% would vote for him in matchups with Democratic candidates, according to a Washington Post/Univision poll released Wednesday night. The poll finds that his Republican opponents, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, would fare far better with the ever-growing Hispanic electorate.
"The GOP has a Latino electorate problem, and that problem is called Donald Trump," said Fernand Amandi, a principal at Bendixen & Amandi International, a Miami-based polling firm that helped conduct the survey.
The poll found that Democrats will easily win the Hispanic vote in November, as they have for decades. But many Republican strategists say their candidate only needs to reach 40% of the Hispanic vote — last reached by President George W. Bush in 2004 — to have a good chance at winning the general election.
Rubio comes the closest to reaching that figure, picking up 33% of Hispanics in a race against Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders and 31% against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Cruz would win 28% of the Hispanic vote in a matchup against Sanders and 27% against Clinton.
