Latino Decisions has teamed up with impreMedia to launch a weekly tracking poll of registered Latino voters voters nationwide -- and its first poll released Monday was not good news for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Romney trails President Barack Obama by nearly 40 percentage points, the poll shows. Obama leads Romney, 65-26 percent. Undecided: 9 percent.
Number polled: 300 registered Latino voters. Margin of error: 5.6 percentage points.
Only 20 percent said they were "certain" to vote for Romney, while 55 percent said they were "certain" to vote for Obama.
Said Gabriel Sanchez, research director at Latino Decisions: "As we have seen in recent months and confirm in this survey, Romney has many challenges in making significant inroads with the Latino vote."
Topping the list of "most important" issues facing the Latino community were the economy and jobs (53 percent), immigration and the DREAM Act (51 percent) and education (18 percent)
One other takeaway from the poll is favorability ratings. Obama's are high with 74 percent, while Romney's are low with 27 percent.
Last week, a poll of Latino voters by NBC/WSJ/Telemundo found similar results: Obama (61 percent), Romney (27 percent)
For some historical perspective, former President George W. Bush got as much as 35 percent of the Latino vote in 2000 and as high as 44 percent in 2004, according to exit polls. John McCain got 31 percent in 2008.
Latino Decisions and impreMedia weekly poll will be released each Monday from now until the Nov. 6 election.
Read analysis by impreMedia's Pilar Marrero here
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