EDITORIAL

The numbers are in, and the way things look, Barack Obama has about as much chance of winning the Hispanic vote as Pat Buchanan.

Hillary Clinton's Latino advantage on Super Tuesday was like the gap you usually see separating Democrats from Republicans in places like California, the Southwest and the Northeast:

• In California, she beat Obama 69 percent to 29 percent among Hispanic voters, while just managing to squeak by among non-Hispanic whites, 45 percent to 42 percent. Obama won 78 percent of the black vote, which means Clinton's 10-point edge overall in this state came thanks to Hispanics and Asians - she won three-quarters of the latter's vote.

• Among Arizona's Hispanics, she won 53 percent to 38 percent; among New Jersey's, 66 percent to 31 percent.

• In New Mexico, Clinton won the Hispanic vote 56 percent to 36 percent, but lost 55 percent to 39 percent among white non- Hispanic voters.

• Clinton also took the Hispanic vote in her home state of New York, 73 percent to 26 percent. Obama barely won the Hispanic vote in his own home state of Illinois, 50 percent to 49 percent.

What explains such a poor performance by such a dynamic candidate?

For one thing, the race factor. Conventional wisdom has it that blacks and Hispanics are "minorities" together, supposedly allies in the struggle against racist whites. But it's not that simple. In Florida, blacks and Hispanics are at odds (many Cubans, in particular, believe blacks tend to be uncritical of Fidel Castro). In places like California or Texas, there is more rivalry than alliance. And even in New York, where blacks and Puerto Ricans have for decades indeed been allies, Clinton won the Hispanic vote.

No one familiar with Hispanic communities can honestly discount a 2006 study by Duke University that found Hispanics "bring negative stereotypes about black Americans to the U.S. when they immigrate."

Still, race is not the entire reason for Obama's poor performance -- those stereotypes ease with the next, Americanized generation, which includes a sizable number of the voters. Another factor is that Hillary is the beneficiary of her husband's popularity among Hispanics, at least the non-Cuban kind. Bill Clinton's simpatico factor meant winning nearly 80 percent of the Hispanic vote in 1996.

And for Hillary, simpatico meant the big margins of Super Tuesday. To be sure, she herself is not particularly famous for simpatico-ness, but people remember her husband and have seen her work assiduously to court Hispanic pols who are part of the political machines loyal to Bill.

Among the few bright lights for Obama is that Hispanics who consider themselves independent are more likely to vote for him. But in the California they made up just 3 percent of the voters in the Democratic primary, and in other states they barely registered in exit polls.

The fact that few Hispanics ever voted for Pat Buchanan means nothing - he had no chance at the presidency. But the fact that few Hispanics are Barack Obama voters means his much more credible candidacy is likely doomed.

- Roger Hernandez is a syndicated columnist and writer-in-residence at New Jersey Institute of Technology.