How Latinos Are Changing The Electoral College Map

[Editor’s note: This was written by Dr. Henry Flores, professor of Political Science and Dean of the Graduate School at St. Mary’s University, in San Antonio, Texas. He is a regular contributor to News Taco, and you can read more of his biography below.]

By Henry Flores, Ph.D.

Studying census data is somewhat like reading tea leaves or gazing into a crystal ball, one is always trying to determine what is said and what it means in the future. There are several things I discovered as I gazed at the crystal ball that are the census data: Latinos are going to play a major role in forthcoming presidential elections and Latinos are spreading over the entire country.

In the 2000 census I found that 90% of all Latino voters resided in only 15 states, now, in 2010, the 15 states where most Latino citizens reside hold only 75% of possible registered voters. I say possible registered voters because we don’t have an accurate count of this particular category yet, the census data are still being analyzed. Also states such as Washington, Connecticut, North Carolina and Virginia are seeing large increases in their Latino populations. So, Latinos are spreading across the United States in numbers never before imagined. As a matter of fact, one of the facts that I uncovered gazing into the crystal ball was that almost half the growth of the population in 33 states was attributed to Latinos.

Some other interesting facts about Latino growth rates indicate that Hispanics contributed to 48% of population growth in AZ. The Hispanic population in CT grew nearly 50% in last decade. The fastest growing demographic group in Ohio is Latinos. Hispanics accounted for 73% of growth in Idaho. Hispanics were 44% of growth in Wisconsin. And, Latinos are growing at a rate four times faster than any other group in United States.

There are now so many Latinos in the United States that our country has become one of the largest Spanish Speaking countries in the world. We are actually number one or two in this category!

The electoral part of all this is that Latinos have become an important voting bloc that can swing states between the two major parties during presidential elections. In 2000 the 15 states where 90% of Latino registered voters resided accounted for 295 Electoral College votes and it only takes 270 to elect the president. In 2008 Obama carried 13 of those 15 states because Latinos voted for him. In 2012, the Latino population dispersion will have even more states in play. This means simply that if the candidates of either party wish to win the presidency they had better be nice to us.

Henry Flores, Ph.D., is a Professor of Political Science and Dean of the Graduate School at St. Mary’s University. Dr. Flores has served as the departmental chairperson for two terms and directed both Graduate Programs in Public Administration and Political Science. He has taught classes at both the graduate and undergraduate levels in public administration, public policy, urban politics, and research methods and statistics.

Since 1986, Dr. Flores has served as an expert witness in more than 50 federal voting and civil rights lawsuits including serving as the statistical testifying expert in NAACP v. Harris which focused on the presidential challenge in Florida in 2000. Dr. Flores has been active with many community-based organizations such as COPS, Metro Alliance in San Antonio, LULAC, NAACP, MALDEF, the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, and the Esperanza Environmental Justice Project. During state redistricting efforts in 2001, he was a senior policy analyst with the William C. Velasquez Research Institute, providing research on the racially polarized nature of the Texas electorate.

Dr. Flores is the author of “The Evolution of the Liberal Democratic State With a Case Study of Latinos in San Antonio, Texas” (2003) and coauthor of “Mexican Americans and the Law” (2004) with three other colleagues.