The 2012 presidential election was the first race in which Latinos made up over 10 percent of the electorate. As we’ve seen in a few other swing states, the Democratic turnout isn’t necessarily way up, but the Republican turnout has noticeably decreased.
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The percentage of eligible Latino voters who turn out to cast ballots typically isn’t as high as other demographics, but early voting data in three key battleground states suggest that could be changing in the 2016 race.
Local Hispanics we talked to seemed to support this theory. Florida is the only state where Latino early voting is outpacing both population growth and growth in the early vote for non-Latinos.
Twenty four percent of the population here are Hispanic and that figure is rising faster than the rise in Florida’s population. “The improvement in Latino participation seems to be modestly exceeding the normal rate of improvement”. According to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, two percent of registered voters in the state or almost 164,000 are Hispanic.
The Latino vote has always been thought to be “in the bag” for Hillary Clinton.
If the election ends badly for Republican nominee Donald Trump, he will find plenty of factors to blame, but one will stand out – his remarks disparaging Hispanics, an electorally powerful minority that is rooting for his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. The second part of Clinton coalition is Asian-American voters who have seen a 90% increase in early voting turnout.
In total, some 13.1 million Latinos are expected to cast a vote this election, which would constitute a 17 percent increase in the number voting and an 8.7 percent increase in Latinos’ share of the vote nationwide. In 2012, 48 percent of Hispanic voters participated, while 67 percent of black voters participated and 64 percent of white voters participated, according to The USA Today.
But polls indicate Clinton may fare even better, with Trump’s rhetoric-from his now-infamous promise to build a U.S. -Mexico border wall to his insults of Venezuelan former Miss Universe Alicia Machado-alienating Latino voters.
To go back to where I started: Yes, it is still possible that Trump wins the 270 electoral votes he needs to be president on Tuesday.
Latinos are dramatically underrepresented in local governments in Texas, according to a first-of-its kind analysis published by the Statesman last month. Meanwhile, 38.8 percent of the ballots come from registered Republicans. The population is highly transient and since 68 percent of votes come from Clark City County, getting the county wrong can ruin entire polls, as Mr. Mellman points out. On Election Day, El Pueblo will monitor a Raleigh polling site with a large number of Latino voters and they’ll man a hotline in the capital city to answer voters’ questions in English and in Spanish. They have also not tended to take into account the turnout of white voters as a point of comparison. “Hillary Clinton wants to raise everybody’s taxes, and they have to pay tremendous amounts of money for Obamacare, but I’m going to repeal it and replace it”. “I think there’s some rumblings in the community with people starting to get engaged politically”.
The number early ballots from Democrats in Arizona has gone up this year, and the turnout among Republicans has decreased. As a result, it is hard to say what the early vote numbers mean for the composition of the electorate this year.
Crucial for victory this time will be the near two million votes from Florida’s Hispanic community. Every night this week, we will also have a special programme – America Decides – from midnight. “Latinos are our base”.
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Sure. Like you said, most of the polls that are out nowadays, they have been under-representing Latinos.
