The Pew Hispanic Center today released a study of the 2006 mid-term elections titled “The Latino Electorate: An Analysis of the 2006 Election.”

You can download the report here:

http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/34.pdf

The major finding of the study was that the growth in Latino voter participation significantly lags the growth in the Latino population. This is in part because most of the growth in the Latino population is not eligible to vote, either because they are too young to vote or because they are not citizens.

However, the report also states that “Hispanics who are eligible to vote are less likely to register and less likely to cast
a vote than either whites or blacks.” This comes despite the expected increase in voter participation by Latinos due to the immigration debate.

The increase in Hispanic voter participation simply did not materialize. Although 40% of US Hispanics are eligible to vote, only about half of those eligible registered to vote in 2006, and only about 60% of those registered then voted.

For illustration purposes:

100 Hispanics
x 40% eligible to vote
x 54% registered
x 60% voting
= 13 Hispanics actually voting

So that’s the story – 13 in 100 Hispanics vote. 44 million Hispanics in the US, 17 million eligible Hispanic voters, and only 5.6 million of them actually voted.

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