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)