The Hispanic Vote in Next Week's Election

A Baseline to Judge Turnout on Nov. 2

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Some commentators have argued that Hispanic turnout in the upcoming mid-term elections will be higher than usual, while others have argued that it will be lower. A new report from the Center for Immigration examines these claims and provides a means for evaluating them, based on data collected by the Census Bureau.    

"The Hispanic Vote in the Upcoming 2010 Elections" is at http://cis.org/hispanic-vote-pre-2010.

Among the findings:

• On average 31.8 percent of Hispanic citizens (18+) voted in the 2002 and 2006 midterm elections, compared to 48 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 42 percent of non-Hispanic blacks.

• The extent to which Hispanics differ from the historical average (31.8% +/- 1.7), will be an indication of how energized they were in 2010.

• Polling of Hispanic voters indicates that immigration is not one of their most important issues.

• Only 28.2 percent of Hispanic voters in the 2008 election were immigrants themselves. Moreover, just 14.3 percent of Hispanic voters in 2008 lived in the same household as a non-citizen.

• The lack of direct personal experience with immigration may explain why the issue does not rank higher in importance to Hispanic voters.

• Based on past patterns, we project that Hispanics will comprise 6.8 percent of the electorate in November 2010. This is a reduction from 7.4 percent in the 2008 presidential election, but is an increase from 5.8 percent in the last off-year election in 2006.

• The Hispanic share of the overall vote in 2010 is a more indirect measure of their enthusiasm because it partly depends on turnout among other groups. If Hispanic participation is average, but participation among non-Hispanic is above average, then the Hispanic share of the vote will be smaller even though their turn out was not unusually low.

• We project that Hispanics in Nov 2010 will comprise 14 percent of the total adult (18+) population and 9.3 percent of the adult citizen population.

• Hispanics comprise a much smaller percentage of voters than they do of the overall adult population because a large share (37.7 percent) of adult Hispanics is not citizens. Also Hispanic citizens register and vote at somewhat lower rates than other groups.

Methods and Data.  

The data for this analysis comes from the Voting and Registration Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS) collected by Census Bureau, which contains about 100,000 adults.  The Voting and Registration supplement is conducted in November every other year after Election Day.

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan research institution that examines the impact of immigration on the United States.

SOURCE Center for Immigration Studies