Obama needs to energize Latino voters

By Richard K. Barry

Here are some more numbers on President Obama's commanding lead over Mitt Romney with Latino voters, as reported by MSNBC, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll of Latino respondents:

• Obama has a 34-point lead over Romney among registered Latino voters, 61 to 27 percent.
• Obama's approval rating among all Latino adults is 61 percent, compared to 48 percent of all Americans in the new NBC/WSJ poll.
• Obama's positive/negative score among Latinos is 58/23 percent. Romney's is 26/35 percent.
• 40 percent of Latino voters think the country is headed on the right direction, compared to 33 percent of all Americans.

The only dark cloud for Obama is that far fewer Latino voters say they are highly interested in the upcoming election, only 68 percent, compared to 81 percent of all voters who express a high degree of interest.

That's no small problem, but at least Obama knows what he has to do.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)