Video: Could race be a determining factor in the election?

>>> welcome back. in addition to voter turnout , our first read team says the race of those voters, the ethnic background could be the true determining factor on who wins the white house . take a look at the two scenarios. first, if white voters make up 74% of the vote, if this happens and both sides maximize their margins, meaning governor romney wins by 20 points and the president wins minorities by 60%, the president would walkway with the popular vote by a fraction of the point. the same is tree for governor romney if whites are 75% of the electorate. in other words, the lynchpin in this race could be turnout among white voters. let me bring in the president of latino vote. we hope to get on john raulson out of nevada . this is interesting for many reasons, and i wanted to talk specific alally about nevada where the foreclosures are high and unemployment rate is high. latinos in that state could help president obama win it in a significant way. let's see what we see in regarding the white vote and in a key state like nevada the latino vote being the difference.

>> if everybody recalls the election of 2010 , when reid was running against sharon inkeningle, all the polls showed engel was ahead by significant margins. what happened was at the end of the day when you looked at the scorecard, latinos went in favor to harry reid 9-10. that was because sharon engel's campaign was so egregious when it came to the latino votes. pollsters feel that la tyne notices won't turn out, and a lot of working class latinos are cell phones. this is the dreary part of polling. you often miss a big swath of potential when it comes to voting to the new voter, which is not only latinos but women and youth. what we're going to see is the not only is nevada up in place, it's a safe bet it's part of the obama camp, but because we have to modernize our polling system the same think in ohio , virginia and florida where you have big numbers of la tonos numbers were there in 2010 and pollsters are missing as well.

>> mccain, bush hispanic vote, john mccain 31% of the latino vote and 2004 george w. bush took 40%. mitt romney in the latest polling 24%. it is not just about immigration we see this regression, if these numbers are correct.

>> it's not just about immigration. mitt romney walked into the selection with the latino vote up for grabs. had he made a case for the economy and education and small business talking directly to the latino voter, he would be ahead among the latino vote. in order tamron , you need at least 40% of the latino vote to make it to the white house , and he doesn't have a formula for that. if you look closely at what's happening in ohio , you have 150,000 voters there that are hispanic and you have virginia where mccain is leading there for the governor and has a sophisticated ground operation that helps obama and you have florida. you have over 100,000 registered democrats, more than republicans among the latino vote.

>> let me play what presidential historian michael beshlav that was on this weekend. he talked about this divide and the electorate. let me play it.

>> this country is so divided between the two candidates, not necessarily only by ideas but by gender, economic groups, ethnicity in some cases. i think that is something that the founders would have been horrified by.

>> we wanted michael on. he wasn't available. it's interesting that the founders are all white males and mostly very wealthy would have been horrified by what we are seeing, which is this divide where you have latinos , african- americans , unmarried women in this one group and young people , and then on the other side of the equation you have a candidate hoping and his people hoping that whites will make up 75% of the electorate so he can win.

>> i think he's leaning towards we're americans first, somehow you create sil lows of americans and that's the most dangerous for our democracy. we see an increasingly generational divide. in ohio close to 23% of 18 to 39-year-olds are latinos . only 15% are 18 to 39. across the country you start to see increasingly demographic changes where there's younger populations of ethnic latinos and african- americans versus older americans . at the end of the day ilts a maerlt of making sure that every vote counts and people stay in line and participate.

>> let me bring in john, the man who knows more about nevada politics than anyone else. six electoral vote . in nevada hispanics account for 27% of the population. so many people have remarked about your unemployment rate there, the foreclosure rate. we were in nevada doing some stories a couple of years ago. every other building it seemed had been abandoned by construction workers there, but even still you're seeing that state, because of the latino vote, really going the way of president obama in the early polling. what are the lessons moving ahead if there are any from your state alone if the numbers are true?

>> i think you laid it out pretty well, tamron . i think we're a microcosm of the nation in that sense. the hispanic vote is 15% of the electorate the last two-cycles. it's likely to be the same. some of the polling has shown president obama up in the hispanic vote by even more than he was in 2008 when exit polls showed he won it by 50 points. if he wasn't anywhere in that neighborhood, 15% of the electorate, you have a difficult time if you're a republican. that goes for the senate race here, too, tamron , now in play. shelley berkeley is a dead heat with dean hall ron. a lot has to do with the hispanic vote.

>> john, we greatly appreciate you coming on. hopefully we have you get some reaction with us after it all goes down tomorrow. thank you, john. we'll see what happens in nevada and the lessons to

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/newsnation/49697824/

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