Major Test For Democrats: Closing Latino Voting Gap
A new report from the Pew Hispanic Center shows that while a record number of Latino voters participated in the 2010 election compared to past midterms, their representation among the electorate is much lower than their representation in the general population. That's a gap Democrats will need to close as they seek to make further inroads with Latinos, who offered Democrats strong support in the last election.
More than 6.6 million Latinos voted in the 2010 midterms, according to the report. That is a record for a midterm election. Latino voters also represented a larger share of the electorate in 2010 than in any previous midterm election, representing 6.9 percent of all voters. The number of Hispanic voters surged 18.8 percent from 2006 to 2010, while the number of white voters fell 3.8 percent.
But in 2010, 16.3 percent of the nation's population was Latino, yet only 10.1 percent of eligible voters and fewer than 7 percent of voters were Latino, according to the report.
The Pew study shows that youth and non-citizenship (more than one third of Latinos are younger than the voting age of 18) make the share of the Latino population eligible to vote smaller than any other group. And even among eligible voters, participation lags.
Across the board, Democrats wooed Latino voters during the 2010 election, in the face of increasingly stringent immigration and border security proposals from Republicans in various states. According to the Edison Research 2010 national House exit poll, 60 percent of Latino voters supported Democratic candidates in the House while 38 percent supported Republican candidates. Still, that's down nine points from the 69 percent of the Hispanic vote Democrats won in the 2006 midterms.
Nationally, President Obama will need to register more Latino voters to compensate for losses among white voters he could face in 2012, based on what we saw in 2010. Polls consistently suggest Obama could struggle to match the 43 percent support among whites that he drew in 2008 according to the Edison Research exit poll. In 2010, according to the exit poll, only 37 percent of whites backed Democrats in House races, while 60 percent supported Republicans.
The story of the 2010 Census was the booming Latino population growth all across the country, which made Democrats even more optimistic about potential future gains. Democrats have consistently identified shifting demographic trends as a major reason they can compete in unlikely battleground states in the next election.
Take Texas, for example. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Patty Murray recently identified the Lone Star State as a potential pickup opportunity for her party, due to changing demographics. Texas witnessed an explosion in Hispanic growth over the past decade, and minorities make up a majority of state residents. But as we've noted before, the trend of Latino population growth being ahead of voter participation is clear upon examination of county turnout figures in the state.
While Democrats outperformed Republicans among Latino voters in 2010, the GOP isn't going to stand on the sidelines. In New Mexico -- where the state's Hispanic population grew by nearly a quarter in the past decade -- an open seat Senate race is likely to feature Hispanic candidates from both parties.
Democrats hold a registration advantage in New Mexico, but the state's top three elected officials are Hispanic Republicans and Gov. Susana Martinez (R) remains popular in the state. Meanwhile, in Nevada, even as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid attracted strong Hispanic support in 2010, Brian Sandoval, a Hispanic Republican, was elected.