Latino turnout squanders chance at being key voting bloc
Latinos are growing faster than any other major population group in the United States, but they still aren’t a major factor in U.S. elections.
At least, yet.
A new Pew Hispanic Center review of Census data and 2010 turnout shows that in the last election, even though 16.3 percent of the country’s population was Latino, just 7 percent of voters were.
This is largely, of course, because of the large amounts of Latinos who are under 18 (35 percent, according to the survey) and who aren’t citizens (22 percent). But even among those who are eligible to vote, Latinos lag far behind.
Just 31.2 percent of eligible Latino voters cast ballots in the 2010 election, compared with 48.6 percent of whites and 44 percent of African Americans.
Clearly, the Latino community is vastly under-represented in the electorate. And that’s a sore spot for Latino leaders — especially given that the community that could draw plenty of attention from both parties as a swing voting bloc.
Swing voters, put simply, get politicians’ attention. And Latino leaders acknowledge that they aren’t getting the attention they could be given their potential impact.
Although black voters vote almost exclusively Democratic, Latino voters are very accessible for Republicans. And there’s plenty of evidence.
A full 44 percent of Latinos voted Republican in the 2004 election. That figure dropped to about 30 percent in both 2006 and 2008 — two big Democratic years — before rising back to 38 percent in 2010.
The good news for Latino leaders is that, even if Latinos don’t increase their turnout numbers, their share of the electorate is going to continue to grow apace.
The Latino population is very young, even among eligible voters. Nearly one-third of Latino eligible voters are under 30 — typically the age group that votes the least.
And another 600,000 Latinos turn 18 every year, adding rapidly to the 21.3 million eligible Latino voters.
“The size of the eligible electorate is growing as fast or faster than the actual voters,” said Arturo Vargas, at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. “So we have our work cut out for us.”
Older Latinos still vote far less than their white counterparts, but they do vote more than younger Latinos. And as the population grows and ages, Latinos should become a very important voting bloc in future elections.
Just maybe not as important as they could be — or as quickly.