Matthew Dowd says Bush to lose

Matthew Dowd, a chief campaign strategist for the Bush/Cheney campaign, said that Bush has to get somewhere between 38-40% of the Hispanic vote in order to win in 2004. They can't be happy then that Kerry leads Bush 61-33 in the latest survey of Hispanic voters.

With a million more Hispanic voters across the country this year than in 2004, the high support for Kerry means Bush and the Republicans don't appear to be making the inroads into the Hispanic vote they hoped for after the 2000 election.

The poll, conducted for The Herald by Zogby International last week, shows that about 61 percent of Hispanic voters nationwide support Kerry, while about 33 percent support Bush. The poll of 751 Hispanic likely voters has a margin of error of 3.7 percent.

"What this means is that Kerry has done what Gore did," pollster John Zogby said. "And secondly, it's now over 60 percent of a larger group of Hispanics."

The Hispanic vote is heavily in play in several key swing states such as Florida, New Mexico, Ohio and Michigan.

I love good news before bed time.