voting patterns

Reports: Latino Voting Patterns/Civic Engagement

• The Hispanic Vote in the 2008 Election
  By: Mark Hugo Lopez
  Organization: Pew Hispanic Center
  Hispanics voted for Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden over Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin by a margin of more than two-to-one in the 2008 presidential election, 67% versus 31%, according to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of exit polls from Edison Media Research as published by CNN. The Center’s analysis also finds that 9% of the electorate was Latino, as indicated by the national exit poll. This is higher, by one percentage point, than the share in the 2004 national exit poll. Download PDF Here
  

• 2008 National Survey of Latinos: Hispanic Voter Attitudes
  By: Mark Hugo Lopez, Associate Director and Susan Minushkin, Deputy Director
  Organization: Pew Hispanic Center
  Hispanic registered voters support Democrat Barack Obama for president over Republican John McCain by 66% to 23%, according to a nationwide survey of 2,015 Latinos conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, from June 9 through July 13, 2008. The presumptive Democratic nominee’s strong showing in this survey represents a sharp reversal in his fortunes from the primaries, when Obama lost the Latino vote to Hillary Clinton by a nearly two-to-one ratio, giving rise to speculation in some quarters that Hispanics were disinclined to vote for a black candidate. But in this new survey, three times as many respondents said being black would help Obama (32%) with Latino voters than said it would hurt him (11%); the majority (53%) said his race would make no difference to Latino voters. Download PDF here
  

• Latino Voters in California
  Organization: Public Policy Institute of California
  COMPARED TO WHITES, LATINOS REPRESENT ONLY A SMALL SHARE OF THE STATE’S VOTERS.
  Latinos make up about 32% of California’s adult population but only 15% of the registered voters most likely to turn out in elections. Asians similarly represent a smaller share of the state’s likely voting population (6%) compared to their share of the adult population (13%), while blacks constitute 6% of both the state’s adult population and likely voters. Although whites constitute less than half (47%) of the adult population in the state, 70% of California’s likely voters are white. Download PDF here