Democratic Hispanics have tipped for Obama in the latest Gallup Poll, per Ambinder’s find. Por Fin!

A lot of my facebook “friends” kept prodding me about Latino support for Obama during the Texas Democratic primary and caucus. “What’s up with your peeps? They are going to ruin the election for Barack,” was a common joke (Ha! Ha ! So funny.) I know some of my other Mexican-American friends also got this prod.

The immigrant kids were particularly quick on the critical draw. You see, given that Obama is sort of like a Rorschach test, immigrant kids I run with tend to appropriate him as the son of an immigrant that also just happens to be black. Younger brown kids tend to be less into the construct of race. And we often lack Anglo names. So you can see the affinity. In any event, I tried my best to serve as my ethnic group’s ambassador to the rest of my Obama-supporting peers. “Hey, I’m phone banking folks, what are you doing!?” and “My mom’s for Obama,” I would defensively say.

On election night older Tejanos still went for Clinton big time, but the numbers improved (a little bit) amongst the young. At my precinct caucus, there were plenty of Latino votes and we even picked a Latina as one of our delegates to the state convention. I knew that there wasn’t some big problem. The reality was that a lot of Texas Latinos (especially political leaders) had very fond memories of the Clintons based on their very real actions and policies in support of the community. If Obama won I was confident that his policies, Latino surrogates, and immigrant ethos could keep cementing the solid margin Democrats have been winning amongst Latinos. But I worried that maybe there was some structural problem I couldn’t discern.

This latest data point is encouraging. Si se puede, y’all!