Latino voting power to soar in 2020

For the first time in history, the number of Latinos eligible to vote in the U.S. general election is expected to climb to more than 13% of the overall electorate, making Latinos the majority minority among American voters.

Data analyzed by the Pew Research Center shows that Latinos will overtake African Americans among eligible voters in the United States in an election with a lot at stake for all minority groups, especially immigrants and their families.

“We project that the 2020 election will mark the first time that Hispanics will be the largest racial or ethnic minority group in the electorate, accounting for just over 13% of eligible voters – slightly more than blacks,” Pew’s website states. “This change reflects the gradual but continuous growth in the Hispanic share of eligible voters, up from 9% in the 2008 presidential election and 7% in the 2000 election. The black eligible voter population has grown about as fast as the electorate overall, meaning their share has held constant at about 12% since 2000.”

Among the states where this shift can make a big difference is Nevada, where Hillary Clinton narrowly defeated Donald Trump in 2016. Nevada has been targeted by Republicans in 2020 and will be one of a handful of battleground states that could tip the scales in what is sure to be a tight presidential race.

National Public Radio’s Lulu Garcianavarro, interviewing journalist Humberto Sanchez who writes for the website The Nevada Independent, asked Sanchez in a piece airing earlier this week what issues are motivating Nevada’s growing Latino electorate.

“Latinos care about health care,” Sanchez explained. “They care about education because they’re a young group. But they, most importantly, care about immigration. It’s a tight-knit community, so everybody knows someone who’s been caught up in the system. So it hits home the issue, and so people are very engaged for that reason.”

According to Pew, “One-in-ten eligible voters in the 2020 election will have been born outside the U.S., the highest share since at least 1970.”

But eligible voters are not the same thing as actual voters.

What Democratic political activists are hoping is that the harsh and unprecedented anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies embraced by Donald Trump will light a fire under a group that historically has failed to make use of its electoral power.

“Voter turnout will play an important role in determining the relative electoral influence of different racial and ethnic groups,” Pew explains. “For example, while Hispanics will outnumber blacks among eligible voters next year, they may not actually cast more ballots than blacks due to different turnout patterns. In recent presidential elections, blacks were substantially more likely than Hispanics to vote. Indeed, the number of Hispanic eligible voters who didn’t vote has exceeded the number of those who did vote in every presidential election since 1996.”

And who is the candidate of choice for most Latinos? In the 2020 presidential contest, Latino voters are so far lining up with black voters as to who they believe can defeat the current occupant of the White House.

“Joe Biden is seen as somebody who can beat Donald Trump,” Sanchez said in the NPR interview, “and that is something that’s really important to Nevadans and the Latino community.”

But it is still very early in the race, and much will depend on what happens in the early primaries. Groups heavily involved in voter registration in Latino communities across the nation say the important thing is for as many eligible voters as possible to register, then they can make informed decisions as to who to support in local and national races. (La Semana)