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The 2006 midterm elections sent a clear message to President Bush and both Political Parties, Americans want fair immigration reform.

“[Tuesday’s election] results show that demonizing immigrants was not the path to victory many candidates thought it would be,” said Janet Murguía, NCLR President and CEO. “The election results indicate a wholesale repudiation of the notion that the American electorate is motivated by anti-immigrant rhetoric, policies, or campaign tactics,” she said, noting that most candidates who ran on an explicitly anti-immigrant platform were defeated.

"Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote,” the slogan so popular during the immigrant marches, really came alive during Tuesday's election. Hispanics went out to vote in unprecedented numbers. For the first time in the history of American elections 8% of all voters were Hispanic. It is the highest percentage that the exit polls have ever recorded. The previous was 7% in the 2000 Presidential Election (Pollster Sergio Bendixen).

Just months after House Republicans used a crackdown on illegal immigrants to energize their party's conservative base, Hispanic voters responded at the voting booth, shifting decisively toward Democrats. According to the exit polls as reported in the Wall Street Journal, more than 70% of Hispanics voted for Democratic candidates while only 26% voted for Republicans. In 2004, only 59% of Hispanics voted for the Democratic candidate, and 40% of Hispanics voted for President Bush and the Republicans.

Exit polls showed more than seven in ten Hispanics voted Democratic in races for House seats. Meanwhile, some 27% voted Republican – an 11-percentage-point drop from the prior midterm election in 2002.

The shift among Hispanics is a serious setback for the long-term strategy of President Bush and political adviser Karl Rove to move the nation's fastest-growing minority voting bloc into the Republican column to help solidify the party's dominance.

In exit polls, 37% of Hispanic voters ranked illegal immigration as an issue that was "extremely important" to them, compared with 29% of all racial demographic groups. In addition, 78% of Hispanic voters said most illegal immigrants should be given a chance to apply for legal status, compared with 57% from all demographic groups.

An exit poll conducted by the Washington Post indicated: “Republicans hoped to capitalize on [immigration], but fewer than one in three cited it as extremely important in influencing their decision, and they only narrowly favored Republican candidates. About six in ten voters said that they believe illegal immigrants working in the United States should be offered a chance to apply for legal status, a position that was supported by Bush but rejected by House Republicans who have pushed an enforcement-first approach to controlling illegal immigration. Democratic candidates won support from 61% of those who backed a path to citizenship, according to the poll.”


“These results suggest that the 110th Congress should get back to the hard work of legislating on immigration reform and a host of other issues that matter to Hispanic Americans, including education, the economy, health care, and jobs,” said Murguía.