10 Reasons Why Immigration Politics Will Affect the Latino Vote

*These are well known reasons, but I like that they’re organized and bolstered with data. VL

By David Damore, Latino Decisions Senior Analyst (4 minute read)

As immigration rhetoric in the Republican presidential nomination campaign continues to escalate and GOP candidates who were once perceived as immigration moderates tack to the right, it is worth considering how immigration politics and policy affect Latino voters; a voting block that is positioned to be influential in 2016.  We at Latino Decisions have conducted over 100,000 interviews with Latino voters in the last several years and have an extensive reservoir of public opinion data assessing these voters’ immigration preferences and measuring how immigration politics shape Latino voters’ decisions to turn out to vote and for whom to cast their ballots.  Below, we highlight the top 10 data points from our archives.

1. Immigration is a Latino policy priority. In the Latino Decisions 2014 Election Eve Poll, 45% of Latino voters indicated that immigration was the most important issue facing the Latino community that should be addressed by politicians.  In the recentimpreMedia/Latino Decisions Battleground States Survey, 36% of likely Latino voters indicated that immigration is the most important issue facing the Latino community that should be addressed by politicians.

This article was originally published in Latino Decisions.

Dr. David Damore is a Senior Analyst at Latino Decisions. He is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a Senior Nonresident Fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program. Damore has been cited as an expert on Latino voting by the Las Vegas Sun and L.A. Times, and identified by FiveThirtyEight as a lead Nevada expert.