Early voting Hispanics grow 13 percent: official
WASHINGTON — The number of Hispanic voters who cast early ballots in this year's legislative elections grew by 13 percent compared to 2006, a senior White House official said Monday.
"We worked hard and made a major effort to reach out to Latinos. We contacted four times more Latino voters that we did in 2006," President Barack Obama's senior political adviser David Axelrod told Hispanic media in a telephone interview.
He said Latinos had cast 660,000 votes so far in early ballots ahead of Tuesday's mid-term elections -- 13 percent more than the early voting total for the 2006 mid-terms -- a number he called "very encouraging."
"If early vote is a trend you're going to see a good outcome in Nevada, California, Colorado," western states home to particularly tight and hard-fought contests, including in Nevada between Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sharron Angle, a Republican.
A total of 5.59 million Hispanics voted in the 2006 legislative and gubernatorial elections, 69 percent of them for Democrats.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 37 of 100 in the Senate are up for grabs in Tuesday's elections, for which Obama's Democratic majority is bracing for heavy losses. Candidates will also be vying for 37 of 50 governorships.
Voters can mail their ballots early in some states. In the 2008 general elections, 30 percent of Americans voted early, an upward trend since the practice began in 1972, according to the Census Bureau.
"I want Latino voters to go out and vote for Democrat candidates but ultimately I'm not asking folks to vote for Democratic Party as much as I am asking to go out and vote for their families interests and their own future," Axelrod said amid slacking enthusiasm among Democrats.
Axelrod was one of the architects of Obama's presidential victory two years ago, and confirmed to Hispanic journalists his intention to leave the White House next spring to focus on the 2012 presidential elections.