Outside the Beltway

Low Voter Turnout Amongst Latino

Steven L. Taylor
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From friend of a friend, political scientist Stephen A. Nuño:  Opinion: Reality check for Latinos

Pew Research Center reported that while African Americans and whites had reached parity in their voter participation rates at 64% and 61%, respectively, Latino voter participation lags far behind at 48%.

More concerning, the number of eligible Latino voters who are not voting has far outpaced the number of Latinos choosing to vote on Election Day. The chart from Pew illustrates that even though Latino voters grew by 1.4 million between 2008 and 2012, Latinos who were eligible to vote but chose not to grew by 2.3 million over the same period.

In total, 12.1 million eligible Latinos did not vote in 2012.

That’s a lot of voters sitting on the sidelines.

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11 responses to “Low Voter Turnout Amongst Latino”

  1. Latino_in_Boston Avatar
    Latino_in_Boston

    I’ve had hope for some time that this might change, but my fellow latinos keep disappointing me.

  2. Dave D Avatar
    Dave D

    Does this mean the republicans may actually embrace a comprehensive immigration reform plan since the majority of their arguments boil down to we can’t let the democrats gain any more voters?

  3. superdestroyer Avatar
    superdestroyer

    @Dave D:

    48% of 12 million additional voters with 80% of them voting for Democrats is still a huge win for the Democratic Party. Why should any Republicans support comprehensive immigration reform eliminates conservatives from politics will lowering the quality of life for middle class Republican voters?

    The low voter turn out does not mention how the total number of Latinos will cause the creation of majority-Latino districts. Does it really matter that Luis Guiterrez gets elected with a low voter turn out just as long as he gets re-elected with no real opponent?

    The low voter turnout and the lack of interest in politics is why white progressive Democrats see Latinos as the perfect majority: automatic Democratic voting habits coupled with little interest in participating in politics.

  4. superdestroyer Avatar
    superdestroyer

    @Dave D:

    48% of 12 million additional voters with 80% of them voting for Democrats is still a huge win for the Democratic Party. Why should any Republicans support comprehensive immigration reform eliminates conservatives from politics will lowering the quality of life for middle class Republican voters?

    The low voter turn out does not mention how the total number of Latinos will cause the creation of majority-Latino districts. Does it really matter that Luis Guiterrez gets elected with a low voter turn out just as long as he gets re-elected with no real opponent?

    The low voter turnout and the lack of interest in politics is why white progressive Democrats see Latinos as the perfect majority: automatic Democratic voting habits coupled with little interest in participating in politics.

  5. Grewgills Avatar
    Grewgills

    @superdestroyer:
    I thought this news would make you happy. I guess nothing will.

  6. michael reynolds Avatar
    michael reynolds

    Actually it makes me happy. We took the WH with Latino votes, now it seems we have huge room for growing that voter block.

  7. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @superdestroyer:

    Why should any Republicans support comprehensive immigration reform

    For at least two reasons:

    1. It is the right thing to do: we, as a country, are not well served by having ~12 undocumented residents.

    2. For the pure politics of it. Despite your constant screeds, there are, in fact, any number of ways that conservative Republicans could appear to Latinos. However, they have taken such an anti-Latino attitude in recent years that they are creating a self-fulfilling prophesy in regards to the Latino vote.

    If party if going to treat Latinos the way you do in your posts (i.e., as a menace) how you do expect them to vote?

  8. bill Avatar
    bill

    @superdestroyer: Hispanics are by nature fairly conservative (so are blacks for that matter), it’s up to the GOP to get the message out that they don’t care about your race- they care about your contribution to society. For some reason they seem to fall into these traps that make them look biased….it’s easy with our media as you can’t live down a “race card” with them. Maybe after 8 yrs of obama’s bs they’ll get the hint.
    Remember, republicans aren’t born-they’re made!

  9. Grewgills Avatar
    Grewgills

    @bill:

    it’s up to the GOP to get the message out that they don’t care about your race- they care about your contribution to society.

    Make that true and it might work.

    For some reason they seem to fall into these traps that make them look biased…

    Generally speaking, they end up looking biased because they are.”

    * Not all Republicans by any means, but the ones that stick their feet in their mouths and end up looking biased.

  10. superdestroyer Avatar
    superdestroyer

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    If there really were a number of ways for Republicans to actually appeal to Latino voters, consultants would be getting rich selling them to the Republicans.

    However, in reality, Latinos have been very loyal Democrats for decades. Use Texas as an example. Even with the Republicans in control of the state, almost no Latinos have become Republicans but have stayed wedded to an irrelevant Democrats in the hopes that demographics will change and they will be the dominant block inside the Democratic Party.

  11. superdestroyer Avatar
    superdestroyer

    @bill:

    Many wonks keep repeating the meme that Latinos (and blacks) are conservative. Yet, there is absolutely no data to support this. The members of the CHC and CBC are some of the most liberal members of Congress. From employment, to economic issues, to social issues, Latinos and blacks have zero interest in conservative issues but are generally very liberal in their support for high taxes, big government, more regulations, more social engineering, more entitlements, and more separate and unequal treatment.

    If anyone is going to claim that demographic groups where more than 50% of the children are born to unwed mothers needs to back up the claim with a tremendous amount of demographic and polling data.

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