Latino Political Influence ‘Will be felt for Generations’
By Tony Castro, Voxxi
“In the coming decades, (Hispanics’) share of the age-eligible electorate will rise markedly through generational replacement alone,” according to according to the report by the Pew Hispanic Center.
“If Hispanics’ relatively low-voter participation rates and naturalization rates were to increase to levels of other groups, the number of votes that Hispanics actually cast in future elections could double within two decades.”
Hispanic political influence, an ‘electoral boom’
Those numbers, says the Pew report, suggest that the apparent record Hispanic voter turnout this presidential election– possibly as many as 12.5 million voters – are only “the leading edge” of an electoral boom.
Still, some critics have discounted the potential Latino vote impact because the country’s 53 million Hispanics who make up 17 percent of the U.S. population accounted for just 10 percent of all voters this year, according to national exit polls.
“To borrow a boxing metaphor, they still ’punch below their weight,’” the Pew study authors wrote.
The report remains optimistic because Hispanics remain the country’s youngest ethnic group, with a median age that is 27 years compared with 42 for whites.
In short, many Hispanics are too young to vote and even among young people, young voters tend to vote less than older adults.
Still, despite lagging badly behind blacks and whites in voter turnout, Hispanics were credited by most experts from both parties as a major reason President Barack Obama won re-election.
“What was incredibly encouraging was to see a significant increase in Latino turnout,” Obama said in his first new conference after the election. “This is the fastest-growing group in the country.
“And you know, historically what you’ve seen is Latino vote — vote at lower rates than the broader population. And that’s beginning to change. You’re starting to see a sense of empowerment and civic participation that I think is going to be powerful and good for the country.”
According to exit polls, upward of 70 percent of Latinos voted for the Obama, while only about 27 percent voted for Republican Mitt Romney.
“I think the growing size of this population and the dispersement of this population around the country may not be fully understood,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center. “But it should be.
“Just look at what happened this year. Latino voters proved to be pivotal in battleground states where people expected like Nevada, Colorado and Florida, places with a large Latino vote. And then in places like Virginia and Iowa, places with small Latino populations, their votes proved decisive.”
This article was first published in Voxxi.
Los Angeles-based writer Tony Castro is the author of the critically-acclaimed “Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America” and the best-selling “Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son.”
[Photo by ElvertBarnes]