Latino population distribution in 2000. The population has grown since then. (Wikipedia image)

The decline in Latino support for Republican candidates has some in the party worried. With demographic trends showing an increasingly diverse country, any party that fails to appeal to minorities is going to have trouble winning elections.

For the GOP, Florida is the state that most concerns party leaders. As Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart told CBS News, “We have a very, very serious problem.” According to CBS News, Florida exit polls showed McCain sinking 14 points among Florida Latinos, from President Bush’s results in 2004. Bush won Florida Latinos and the state itself; McCain lost both.

Another troubling state is New Mexico, which is almost half Latino. Obama won that state this year too, along with Colorado and Nevada. Republicans lost ground among Latinos in all three states, and the Latino population grew. Writing in the Sacramento Bee, political analyst Tony Quinn notes that Republicans lost New Mexico’s Senate and congressional races as well: “For the first time in four decades, there are no New Mexico Republicans in Congress.”

Quinn points to Latinos’ social conservativism as one way for the GOP to regain their votes. He also says that exorcizing nativism would help, and columnist Ruben Navarrette says that Latinos have “had their fill of ugliness, racism, hypocrisy and falsehoods spread by opportunistic politicians offering nothing more than simplistic solutions and overheated rhetoric.”

In The Politico, Robert E. Lang, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, says the GOP’s problem isn’t just Latino– it is a broad, sweeping trend toward more diversity and increasing urbanism, to which Republicans need to adjust, or they will perish. From Lang’s piece:

Republicans must adjust to the demographic shifts sweeping America or risk being politically marginalized. Most significantly, the party needs to recognize that there are simply not enough rural white voters to balance the growing number of minority voters and cosmopolitan whites living in big metro areas. If Republicans think 2008 went badly, try running the same kind of small-town-flavored campaign in 2020. At that point, the vastly expanded and racially diverse metro areas in Texas and Georgia could tip those once reliably red states to the Democrats.