Low Voter Turnout Weakens Latino Political Power

Well, so much for the left's "coalition of the ascendant."

At LAT, "The Latino vote is growing -- but it could be much bigger":

By all accounts, the Central Valley is a place where Latino candidates should win elections.

Latino political activism here dates back to the farmworker movement of the 1960s. In one congressional district that stretches up through the valley from Kern County to Fresno County, nearly 3 out of 4 residents are Latino.

Yet Latino candidates' election losses have piled up here in recent years — in large part because Latinos aren’t turning out to vote.

For all the talk of the growing Latino electorate and the pivotal role it is expected to play in the 2016 presidential race, there is another often overlooked demographic reality: Latinos, along with Asian Americans, remain dramatically underrepresented in most U.S. elections.

Half a century after passage of the Voting Rights Act, which ended legal barriers to voting for blacks across the South, blacks and whites now vote at roughly equal rates, especially in presidential elections. But Latinos and Asians lag far behind in all races, even when noncitizen immigrants are accounted for.

As a result, the U.S. electorate may be less reflective of the nation’s ethnic and racial diversity today than it was in the 1950s, when the country was 90% white, according to political scientist Bernard Fraga of Indiana University, who studies minority voting trends.

In the 2014 midterm election, only 27% of eligible Latinos voted, compared with 46% of whites and 41% of African Americans, according to U.S. census data.

While the Latino vote is big and growing -- 40 million Latinos will be eligible to vote in 2030, up from about 25 million in 2014 -- it’s nowhere near as big as it could be.

“There’s more Latinos and more eligible Latino voters in the United States than ever before,” Fraga said. “They should have even greater voting strength than they do. They should be even more of a force in politics. But a lot of them aren’t turning out to vote.”

Understanding why Latinos aren’t voting at a higher rate is an urgent question for candidates and parties who depend on Latino votes to win.

Democrats say they will need a big Latino turnout to carry swing states such as Nevada, Colorado and probably Florida in the 2016 presidential race. In next year’s Senate race in California, U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana) will depend on Latino votes in her race against state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris.

But there are many hurdles to improving turnout.

Keep reading.

Maybe Democrats should get to work mobilizing legal Latinos, instead of opening the floodgates for illegal Mexican murderers and rapists?