But that fact is that no matter how righteous immigrant advocates view their cause, and as much as Latinos claim to desire immigration reform, the paltry voter participation rate of Latinos continues to be unimpressive to either party.
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.
I’m pretty sure that Republicans have lost Latinos for at least one generation, even if their next Presidential candidate is named “Cruz” or “Rubio”, but it don’t mean a thing if Latinos don’t go out and vote.
(via Steven L. Taylor)
Jeremy
Well it depends on which states. In California, Colorado and other Western States Latino voter turnout has increased. I think over time we will see Latino voter turnout nationally increase, but at the same time engagement with the community is essential.
cvstoner
Actually, they are voting. What they are voting is “no confidence”
PeakVT
Any guesses as to why? Language barriers, perhaps, though that seems unlikely to explain all of the difference.
The Moar You Know
I have said this until I’m blue in the face and will say it one more time: Democrats cannot rely on an imaginary and quite likely nonexistent “demographic time bomb”, sit on their asses, and wait for the Latino vote to come to their rescue.
We need a Plan B (some guy named Howard Dean had a pretty good one a few years back) and a Plan C as well.
I’ll say this: Republicans have earned their victories. Did they cheat? Fuck yes, but why weren’t we in a position to stop that shit? Or cheat just as well?
They were in the wilderness for almost fifty years and have come back not only to be serious contenders in national politics, but in state and local politics as well. During that time, Democrats have done…not much.
They are organized and ready to take it all. We are not. If Hilary does not run in 2016 then Dems better pray that they get someone as moderate as Christie in office.
burnspbesq
GOTV es muy importante.
cvstoner
@The Moar You Know:
Exactly. They need a better plan than to just be the party for those who don’t want to be a Republican.
hildebrand
@PeakVT: That is simply not the case in Deep South Texas – our polling places are plentiful and bilingual. We even have early voting – which they have attempted to move to very accessible places (including my university). Turnout is still dreadful. Our county celebrated last year’s presidential election turnout because we hit a record – 48% of eligible voters. Oooh, exciting.
Many of my students don’t vote (the good lord knows I try to motivate them to do so), because their families don’t vote – they simply don’t see the value in it. They know that the same old folks, who serve the same old families, will win. They aren’t fully wrong, our collection of elected officials (all Democrats) aren’t all that interested in getting more people down here engaged in the process. They have solid seats, they don’t really need to motivate the people to get re-elected, and so they allow the whole area to stagnate. Then they wonder why the rest of Texas (and the country) doesn’t pay attention to us.
Zifnab25
Well, the whole “Battleground Texas” initiative is focused on changing that. I think GOTV efforts among Latinos could yield big rewards. A lot of it is just getting the money and manpower in place to tap them. This is like the old Dean “Fifty State Strategy”. If you never invest in a state, you’re never going to see a return.
Patricia Kayden
Wow. Wonder what explains the low voter turnout for Latinos. Seems odd that you wouldn’t vote when you have the right to do so — at least to me. Knowing how much blood was shed for Blacks like me to vote makes it a joy for me to make the effort (even though I’m not African American and a first generation American).
Feudalism Now!
This is a big opportunity. Get out the vote, get people excited to vote, run on relevant issues. Point out where the other guy is shafting you on relevant issues. This is not rocket science, it is remedial politics.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
And at a national level they haven’t been. The reason Democrats are winning between 2/3 and 3/4 of the Latino vote is because they have adopted policies that align with Latino interests. Latinos skew young and working class, and the Democrats are the party that’s working on policies that help young and working class voters. Also, too, Latinos care a lot more about immigration than the average voter, and Democrats are much more favorable to immigration reform. Now we need to concentrate on moving Latinos from being people who like Democratic policies to being people who vote for Democratic candidates.
cvstoner
Exactly. When your district is gerrymandered in your favor, you don’t have to work that hard to get reelected, so the “fringe” suffers.
schrodinger's cat
Are these Latino citizens who are not voting or are they Permanent Residents, who could become citizens and haven’t done so yet, for whatever reason.
glocksman
@hildebrand:
Same problem here in southwestern Indiana, except that the fucking comes from both parties because the city’s ‘elite’ control both.
A perfect example came during our last mayoral election where an upstart won the Democratic nod over the insider.
The vice chairwoman of the local Democratic party, along with a bunch of the ‘traditional’ Democrats, then literally endorsed the Republican.
Naturally the Repub won since the Democratic party machinery wasn’t working for the Democrat like they should have been.
What was Rick Davis’s sin, you might ask?
He had this weird idea that the city should spend money on complying with a 40 year old EPA decree and fix our combination sewers, instead of doubling rates and letting ratepayers foot the entire bill.
The ‘elite’ would rather spend the money ($160 million+ and counting) on vanity projects to ‘save’ downtown Evansville.
Never mind that thanks to those same combination sewers, the entire area smells like a porta potty on a hot day, and that we’ve thrown money at the downtown since the 1970’s with very little to show for it.
I personally would rather fix the sewers instead of throwing good money after the bad in yet another ‘revitalization’.
schrodinger's cat
Has anyone done a study of how voter participation correlates with income?
KXB
@Roger Moore:
Yes, but is that 2/3-3/4 of 200,000 Latinos voting or 2 million Latinos? The majority percentages matter more when the total number of voters increases.
Secondly, I think the views to immigration are a bit more nuanced. Immigrants who are already here want to secure their position, or establish a pathway to permanent residency/citizenship for their relatives who need it. They would also like to see more money on health and education in their neighborhoods.
I do not know what their views are in increasing immigration levels. Business loves increased immigration because it is cheap, unorganized labor. If a field hand asks for a raise or time off to care for a sick kid, he can be replaced at a fraction of the cost. I do not see how increasing the pool of cheap labor will improve the status of laborers. Cesar Chavez did not want to put up a fence, but he did not want American agri-business to have an unlimited supply of cheap labor either.
hildebrand
@cvstoner: The gerrymandering consolidates Hispanic votes, so while technically true that the politicians in the districts gain a significant advantage, the overall effect is not beneficial.
Joel
One of the ironies of electoral participation is that people will only vote if they feel that they have a chance of impacting things.
fuckwit
Where is El Cucuy in all of this? We need the Spanish-speaking media to get on board with GOTV propaganda, NOW. Where are the millions wearing the white golf shirts who marked for Dia de los Immigrantes? We need them out registering voters, all day, every day.
Latinos can organize their ass off when they see the need to do so. I was shocked at how well the protests during the Bush years were organized.
This is a job for community organizers, who know how to speak Spanish fluently.
max
I’m pretty sure that Republicans have lost Latinos for at least one generation, even if their next Presidential candidate is named “Cruz” or “Rubio”,
If they run Cruz or Rubio, they’ll have some Hispanic dude on the TV or in the newspaper who is going to vote R for the first time. They won’t play up the number of Hispanic voters who won’t budge. Because they never had Hispanic voters. What they’ve done is insure they won’t have Hispanic voters, which I expect was the whole point.
The D strategy for passing immigration reform was apparently rooted in the idea that business types around DC like the idea, so obviously Republicans would grumble and give in, and if they didn’t they’d be labeled the Neo-Confederate party. Problem is, is that not only does the base of the R party not really mind being labeled the Neo-Confederate party, they actually quite like it. As long as you don’t call them racist. (Ha ha! NO.)
but it don’t mean a thing if Latinos don’t go out and vote.
Poor & working class people have less free time & less mental space to cope with politics than little old conservative white ladies. That’s just something we have to cope with.
max
[‘Keep pluggin’.’]
PeakVT
@schrodinger’s cat: There’s a positive correlation. However, I don’t think there is much difference in income between Latinos and blacks, but the voter turnout is substantially different. So income is probably not the explanation here.
Emerald
@The Moar You Know:
Christie’s no moderate. He just plays one on teevee.
schrodinger's cat
@PeakVT: How much of the black turnout can be attributed to Obama’s being on the ballot?
Roger Moore
@KXB:
I suspect that the details of immigration reform preferences vary a lot within the Latino community. For example, there are plenty of Latinos whose families have all been living in the US for generations. They don’t particularly care about immigration as it affects them directly, and a lot of them are at least mildly anti-immigrant. But they can’t escape the immigration issue because they wind up being profiled, so they wind up being in favor of any immigration policy that doesn’t treat anyone with slightly dark skin and the wrong last name as a suspect.
The Moar You Know
@Emerald: I’m painfully aware of that.
But he’s as good as you’re going to get if you have even a shred of liberal leanings. I’m thinking that we’re going to get someone along the lines of Paul Ryan and Scott Walker, with a dash of Bachmann’s xenophobia and Santorum’s bedroom police. Who that person is, I cannot say.
There will be blood.
Belafon
@cvstoner: Actually, no. They are not voting. Anyone who does not vote is not voting. You know, like Doug.
DFH no.6
Voter registration drives and subsequent GOTV efforts in the barrios (primarily Mexican-American) in Joe Arpaio County, AZ are beyond dispiriting. I’ve participated in more than a few of these in my over 3 decades living here since moving from Cleveland for a job, but after last year’s I’m done.
It was much more fulfilling (and useful) when I went back to Cleveland for the final couple of weeks of the Obama campaign last fall and volunteered with OfA in my old working class neighborhood (inner city west side, mix of white and black residents)..
A number of factors contribute to the lack of interest and involvement for the Hispanic community here, no doubt, many already mentioned in this thread.
One not mentioned that I think is important is the endemic political corruption south of the border. Thus the very close ties that my Hispanic neighbors maintain with their former home (or home of their ancestors) contributes to cynicism and distrust regarding American politics, IMHO.
Another Holocene Human
@glocksman: Fuck yeah, this bullshit is everywhere. A real estate agent’s fantasy of good government.
Roger Moore
@DFH no.6:
In fairness, can you blame people who have spent years watching Joe Arpaio for being cynical about political corruption? He makes me, a native born white American, pretty cynical about corruption, and I don’t even live in the same state. Not that the Los Angeles County government has been doing much better at fighting by cynicism.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: Short answer: nobody’s sure.
Long answer: a number of factors have influenced African American voter participation, but Obama on the ballot in 2008 didn’t hurt.
I personally know folks who voted for the first time in that election.
To the subject of this thread, people will stay home and sit on their hands when they feel like (rightly or wrongly) that they have nobody to vote for. If their parents didn’t teach them, as mine did, to cast blank ballots or write in cartoon characters when you hate all your choices, you never get the habit.
A bunch of people–not a huge percentage, but some of these races come down to small percentages–got the habit for the first time in 2008… and once they got a taste, they kept returning.
I have a few friends out in AZ whose goal is to give disadvantaged voters their first taste of voting by casting a ballot against Arpaio. I think it’s gonna work.
Another Holocene Human
@fuckwit: Why do you assume they’re NOT out there? Why don’t you take a look around Facebook and come back before you run your mouth.
Paul in KY
@The Moar You Know: Those doofuses you mentioned (except Christie) will be easier to beat, no matter who the Democratic nominee is.
DFH no.6
@Roger Moore:
“Blame” is perhaps too loaded a term, but use Joe Arpaio as an excuse not to vote?
Why, because Arpaio has some political machine that rigs the vote or otherwise dispenses political favors? Ridiculous – there is no such thing, nor even any claim of such.
Arpaio is a bad sheriff, and particularly bad for the Hispanic community here, but “politically corrupt”? No, he’s not.
Hell, if anything, he should be a strong impetus for Hispanic voting. But he wins in a landslide every time because the bigoted crackers who love him vote, and the Hispanic community who hates him does not.
Why? My opinion is that to a significant portion of the Hispanic community here democracy simply doesn’t mean that much. Bigoted crackers, though, mostly take it fairly seriously and at least vote, and then usually their guys get elected and do the things the bigoted crackers want (often enough, anyway).
After living here for over 30 years my impression is that to many of my Hispanic neighbors this place is just a cleaner, safer, better-paying Mexican state that happens to be run by rich English-speaking white people instead of rich Spanish-speaking Mexicans. Government “by the people” (for instance, them) is just not that important.