According to USA Today, the "battle for the Hispanic vote is on." But what the paper doesn't mention is that one of this year's White House hopefuls is already the heavy favorite to win.

In a piece pegged to John McCain and Barack Obama's back-to-back appearances tomorrow before the annual meeting of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Kathleen Kiely reports (in the words of her headline) that the "Latino vote [is] 'up for grabs' [and] could swing [the] election outcome." The second part of that assessment is true. The first part? Depends how you define "up for grabs." 

One of the most persistent myths of the interminable Democratic primary clash was that Hispanic voters didn't like Barack Obama. (The oft-cited but largely inaccurate reason: his race.) Yes, Latinos preferred Hillary Clinton to Obama; her longstanding ties to the community (and her husband's popularity) typically gave her a two-to-one edge over the Illinois upstart. But pundits too often predicted--illogically--that this outpouring of Latino support for Clinton in the primaries would translate into lack of support for Barack Obama in the general election. They've been proven wrong. In early May, a Gallup poll showed Obama beating McCain 51 percent to 41 among Hispanics--a relatively narrow margin. But by the end of the month--as the Democratic race was winding down--Obama's support had skyrocketed to 62 percent, and McCain's had plummeted to 29. Polls taken since then have mirrored that massive 30-point gap, with the most recent (AP/Ipsos) showing Obama clobbering his Republican rival 65 to 21.

This means that if Hispanics do, in fact, swing November's election, they're much more likely to swing it to left. According to NALEO, 9.2 million Latinos will cast ballots this fall--a 21 percent increase over 2004. (In the Democratic primaries, Hispanic turnout was up 42 percent.) What's more, many of these votes tend to be concentrated in a quartet key swing states--Florida, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. In 2004, George W. Bush received record Latino support (for a Republican) of between 40 and 45 percent, which propelled him to victory in each of those crucial contests--and the election overall. But as it stands, McCain is trailing Bush by 15-20 points among Latinos, and Obama's beating John Kerry's final numbers by 10. That's one reason the latest polls show him leading in Colorado and New Mexico and closing in Florida and Nevada. In the end, it's pretty simple: a major surge in Latino turnout is better for the candidate who's getting two-thirds of their support than the candidate who's not. End of story.

Of course, Election Day is still four months away. John McCain has long history of appealing to Hispanics. He won 54% of the Hispanic vote in the Florida primary, for example, and often boasts that 70 percent of Hispanics supported him in the 2004 Arizona Senate race. Most importantly, he famously broke with the GOP to cosponsor comprehensive immigration reform in early 2007. But the problem for McCain is that he's spent the year or so since his bill failed trying to reassure the right wing that he's not "soft" on immigration, and will find it difficult in the coming months to reach out to Hispanics on the issue without offending the Republican base. (He's already in hot water for secretly meeting with Latino leaders in Chicago last week.) Still, Kiely is technically correct when she writes that "both candidates have strong selling points for Hispanic voters." It's just she forget to mention that, based on the current numbers, Obama looks much more likely to seal the deal.