TRUMP RISING WITH HISPANICS – AT 11:55 A.M. ET:  It is clear that if Donald Trump can cut significantly into Hillary Clinton's lead with blacks and Hispanics, he could probably win the election, and possibly win it easily.  He seems to be doing better with both groups.  The Hill reports on Hispanics: 

Donald Trump is performing about as well with Hispanic voters as GOP nominee Mitt Romney did in 2012, according to opinion polls — something that unsettles Democrats and surprises even some Republicans.

Skeptics had suggested that Trump would suffer a blowout among Hispanics, given that his rhetoric, on illegal immigration in particular, has been controversial.

Trump’s promise to build a wall on the southern U.S. border and force Mexico to pay for it is perhaps the best known of his campaign pledges. And at his campaign launch in June 2015, he said people coming into the country illegally were “rapists.”

But as of right now, there is not much evidence to suggest that Trump is faring any worse among Hispanics than did Romney, who at one point argued that illegal immigrants in the United States could be persuaded to “self-­deport.”

In some places, Trump is actually outperforming Romney. In Nevada, for example, President Obama ran up a 47-point margin of victory among Hispanic voters in 2012, according to exit polls, defeating Romney 71 percent to 24 percent. A recent Marist poll in the state for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal showed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leading among Hispanics, but by the smaller margin of 35 points, 65 percent to 30 percent.

A series of Univision polls earlier this month surveying Hispanic voters in four battleground states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Nevada — also put Trump in the same ballpark as Romney four years ago. Clinton’s lead over Trump among Hispanics in Colorado was smaller than Obama’s margin in that state in 2012.

A Bloomberg Politics "poll decoder" on Tuesday averaged several national surveys and found Clinton leading among Hispanics by 38 points. But Obama won the group by six points more in 2012, according to exit polls.

That has led some Democrats to question Clinton’s strategy. In a Washington Post report over the weekend, some suggested her campaign was too slow to begin Spanish-language advertising.

COMMENT:  The press likes to assign to ethnic groups the opinions that journalists think they should have.  Thus, the press is shocked when African Americans or Hispanics support Trump.  Reports from a few days ago suggested that Trump's black support is growing.  That may well be what prompted President Obama to make the bizarre statement that he'd consider it a personal insult if blacks voted for Trump.  And now we have this piece from The Hill on Hispanics.

I look forward to new polling, and especially polling after next week's first debate.  That should give us a clearer indication of where ethnic groups are going.  If they are going toward Trump, Hillary can cancel the moving van.

September 20,  2016