By Astrid Munn

(AXcess News) Washington - They voted for Al Gore in 2000, and were swing voters in 2004, choosing President Bush. Now, Latino Protestants are likely to be swing voters again, favoring Barack Obama over John McCain by a 17-point margin, which researchers attribute to anti-immigration rhetoric from the right.

This and other findings were released Thursday as part of the National Survey of Latino Protestants. Faith in Public Life, a nonprofit group, and other organizations sponsored the survey, which asked 500 Latino Protestant voters this month how they will vote in the presidential election and how much weight they place on immigration policies.

"Latino Protestants are the quintessential swing voters," said Katie Paris, communications director for Faith in Public Life. "They put moral solutions above ideologies, and with that, they're defying partisanship."

The Pew Hispanic Center estimated in 2007 that 15 percent of the 45.5 million Latinos in the United States were Protestant and that Latino Protestants were twice as likely as Catholic Latinos to identify with the Republican Party. In addition to being swing voters, many Latino Protestants live in swing states with large Latino populations such as Florida and Nevada.

The new survey found there are about 9.2 million Latino Protestants in the U.S., but its sponsors were not prepared to say how many of them are eligible to vote.

Latino Protestants are not warming up to McCain as much as they did to Bush in 2004. Post-election surveys found that Bush captured 63 percent of the Latino Protestant vote. The survey found that McCain is likely to capture 33 percent of their vote in 2008. 

Survey sponsors attribute this to the GOP's approach to immigration reform, which focuses on securing the U.S.-Mexico border and opposes granting legal status to illegal immigrants already living in the United States.

Nearly two-thirds of Latino Protestants said they have heard anti-immigration rhetoric from both Democratic and Republican politicians. But in response to a different question, 40 percent associate it with only Republicans and 7 percent only with Democrats.

"Our current departure from the Republican Party ... speaks to a constituency still waiting to receive clarity on whether the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln and Reagan or the party of Tancredo and Buchanan," said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. "Are we going to vote for a party that fights for abortion and marriage issues, but doesn't necessarily want us?"

He was referring to Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and Pat Buchanan, who have both run for president and are outspoken opponents of policies that would allow illegal immigrants to gain legal status.

The survey found that immigration, abortion and same-sex marriage are important issues for Latino Protestants and that they depend on their religious beliefs to guide their political thinking on issues such as immigration.

"Latinos tend to take a holistic approach," said researcher Gaston Espinoza, a religion professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif. "They tend not to be one-issue voters. They're going to take abortion, they're going to take immigration ... and they're going to take other variables, education and the economy, et cetera. They're looking at that through the lens of faith and asking, ‘What would Jesus do?'"

This is not atypical to Latino Protestants, as the Pew Hispanic Center reports Latinos in general depend on their faith to guide their political issues, and they expect it to guide the decisions of their lawmakers

Pew found in 2007 that 77 percent of Evangelical Latinos believe abortion should be illegal and 54 percent of Latino Catholics feel the same.

But Aurora Tinajero, director of Spanish ministry with the Dallas-based Catholic Pro-Life Committee of North Texas, said the main difference between Protestant and Catholic Latinos this election is the importance of having a president who opposes abortion, such as McCain.

"Catholic Hispanics are more interested in having a pro-life president, with immigration as a secondary concern," she said

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Source: Scripps Howard Foundation Wire