All About Latinos and the Midterm Election: the Outcome, the Turnout and the Missed Opportunities

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

You’d expect the day after a midterm election to be awash in opinion, commentary, punditry and speculation. Especially a midterm in which one political party took control of Congress while the other remained in the White House.

There was a growing buzz of anticipation about the Latino vote and how it would or wouldn’t affect the outcome. That buzz has turned into a predictable drone highlighted by what-if’s and should-have’s. I’ve been knee-deep in reading the punditry and have chosen a few articles that sum-up what is being said and written across the mediasphere about Latinos and their vote.

Colorlines did a good job bringing-up the question about President Obama’s immigration delay play, and whether it had an effect on the low Latino voter turnout. It’s a valid and much asked question. The answer has as much to do with youth and citizenship than it does with the politics of immigration.

NPR took the idea of Latinos being vital for the midterm outcome and transposed it to 2016. Same question – how important is the Latino vote in the next presidential election; where will it be important; why … ? We’ll be hearing more of this in the coming two years.

There’s always the thought of missed opportunities. NBC’s Stephen A. Nuño took a good stab at the missed opportunities idea. His take? That politicos missed the Latino vote opportunity, that the results could have been different if …

Something to ponder – not new but important nonetheless – is the fact that U.S. voters favor legalizing the undocumented by 58 percent. Fox News Latino dives into that pool and gives a pretty good analysis of what that statistic means and how it can affect the politics of immigration and of 2016.

And as always, Texas is in the speculation cross-hairs when it comes to Latino politics. The idea continues to be that as Texas is now, the rest of the country will be in the future. So the Austin American-Statesman tacked the issue from the front lines. It’s a good read, with four takeaways about how Latinos affected (or not) the outcomes, and how that may change (or not).

I’m sure there’ll be more to come in the next few days.