Just two years after 40% of Hispanic Americans voted for Republican President George W. Bush’s reelection, far fewer say they think the Republican Party understands them best, a new Zogby/Hispanic PR Wire telephone poll shows.

Barely one in five Hispanic voters – 23% – said they felt the Republican Party understands them best, compared to 56% who said they think Democrats know them better, the new survey shows.

The Zogby/Hispanic PR Wire poll, conducted Nov. 17–20, 2006, included 903 respondents, 737 of which were voters in the Nov. 7 general election. The poll carries a margin of error of +/– 3.7 percentage points.

Even among Hispanics who said they were themselves Republicans, just 76% said they thought the GOP understood them best. Another 8% said the Libertarian Party best understood them, 7% thought Democrats knew them better, while 10% of Republicans said that either another party better understood them, or that they were unsure. Among Democratic Hispanics, 83% said their own party better understood them, while 4% said Republicans understood them best. Another 7% of Democrats said other minor parties had the best understanding of them, while 7% were uncertain.

Asked which political party is best equipped to manage a handful of important issues, Hispanics who said they had voted in the recent congressional midterm elections favored Democrats on each by wide margins, including immigration, where 49% said Democrats were better equipped to manage the issue, compared to 26% who favored the Republicans.

The longer the respondent’s family had been in America, the more likely they were to support Democrats over Republicans on the issue, the survey showed. While 43% of those not born in the U.S. said Democrats were better equipped, 56% of those who were fourth–generation Americans or greater favored Democrats, suggesting that the more familiar Hispanic voters were with Republican policies, the less they liked them.

Immigration was at the center of a heated debate in Congress earlier this year that split the Republican Party over how to deal with the U.S. southern border and immigrants who had entered the country illegally. Some Republicans backed plans that would have dealt harshly with such illegal immigrants – most of them Hispanic.

Which Political Party is Better Equipped to Deal With . . .

The Zogby/Hispanic PR Wire survey also asked a broader pool of respondents including both Hispanic voters and non–voters which issues they believed were most important to the nation, where a significant majority cited the Iraq war as the dominant issue.

While 60% said the Iraq war was one of the two most important issues, 25% cited jobs and the economy as a top concern. Terrorism was mentioned by 15%, while 13% said dealing with the illegal immigration problem was a top concern. As with non–Hispanics across the nation, Democratic Hispanics were more likely than Republican Hispanics to say the Iraq war was a top concern.

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Miami-based and Latino-owned Hispanic PR Wire (HPRW) is the nation’s leading press release wire service for Hispanic and Puerto Rico journalists and marketers.  Through scores of news partnerships with many of the nation’s leading Hispanic newspapers, magazines and Internet portals, HPRW gives clients more than 75 online placements with any geographic press release distribution.

Hispanic PR Wire sends corporate, government and non-profit press releases and media advisories daily to thousands of journalists subscribed to receive its email news and RSS feeds.

Hispanic PR Wire is a sister company of editorial features service ConTexto Latino, Hispanic monitoring service LatinClips, Hispanic professional development service Hispanic Market Pro, Hispanic Web marketing firm Hispanic Digital Network and African American wire service Black PR Wire. HPRW is also the exclusive Hispanic wire partner of leading corporate wire distributor Business Wire.

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For a detailed methodology statement, please visit: http://www.zogby.com/methodology/readmeth.dbm?ID=1153