Metropolitan Latino Political Behavior: Voter Turnout and Candidate Preference in Los Angeles (original) (raw)
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Hispanic Turnout for Mayoral Elections with Latino Candidates
2018
While the United States had a Hispanic population boom from 9.6 million in 1970 to 57.5 million in 2016, the state of Texas carried the second largest portion of that increase, 10.7 million, trailing only California (Flores 2017). In response to this population effect, there has been a discussion in the scholastic field about the repercussions of voter engagement or lack thereof. This paper will look at two cities with heavy Hispanic populations, both containing over sixty percent of their city’s population. Both cities are located in the Southwestern part of the United States and have significant populations of over half a million residents. They are both cities that are under council-manager forms of government. According to the United States Census Bureau, El Paso’s 2017 population was 683,577, while San Antonio’s was 1,511,946. In the Southwest, there is a stigma that the Non-Hispanic mayoral candidates alienate the Latino voters, which hurts an already disenfranchised population. Many Latinos are hesitant to vote in elections that have an overabundance of strong Non-Latino White candidates . The lack of engagement by Latino voters hurts their chances to expand monetary allocations towards services and programs they support most. With the lack of Hispanic voter participation in the Southwest, this paper will seek to answer, “Do Latino mayoral candidates increase Hispanic voter turnout?” This question is important because, as previously stated, there has been a major population increase of Hispanics in the United States. For such a large population to have a voice, a great presence at the polls is imperative. For Latinos to feel adequately represented researchers must look to the “whys” of the lack of participation and how to change that. One issue that can be taken into consideration is both cities lack a partisan local election. When voters go to the polls for state and federal elections there is an identifier next to the last name, mainly two, Republican or Democrat. When this is not present, this can cause confusion for the voter. According to the National League of Cities, “In the absence of a party ballot, voters will turn to whatever cue is available, which often turns out to be the ethnicity of a candidates name” (National League of Cities 2018).
Differencial influences on electoral latino participation
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Latino Electoral Participation: Variations on Demographics and Ethnicity
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
born and immigrant) voter turnout and participation in the 2012 presidential election. We estimate multivariable models of turnout and participation, including standard demographic characteristics (education, income, age, gender, marital status) as explanatory variables. Our findings indicate that the relationships between these characteristics and participation are much less consistent across these datasets than the conventional wisdom would suggest. Understanding these results likely requires survey data-with large sample sizes-including information on the resources (including education and income) available to immigrants in their home countries to better understand the lingering influences of immigrants' experiences in their countries of origin on voter turnout.
Latino Studies, 2013
Little research has been conducted to understand how state-level political and social conditions influence electoral participation among naturalized Latinos. This study begins to fill that gap by examining how both Latino-specific factors (the rate of hate crimes targeting Latinos, the rate of Latino unemployment and the amount of Spanish-language advertising) and more general state-level factors (the level of political competitiveness) impact Latino voter turnout in the 2004 election. I find that the single largest predictor of voter turnout among naturalized Latinos is the rate of Latinospecific hate crimes in a state, suggesting strong support for theories of group conflict and group consciousness as means of political mobilization. Latino unemployment has a large negative effect on voter turnout, even while holding constant individual household income, suggesting support for theories of social connectedness and the argument that collective identity can potentially demobilize individuals and groups. The overall findings provide further evidence of the need to develop models and theories of political engagement specific to minority groups.
Hispanic Voters, State and Local Elections: How to Awake the Sleeping Giant
Review of History and Political Science, 2018
In 2016, between one and two thousand Hispanic voters in the city of Hazleton came to the polls to vote for a woman regarded as a traditional insider. From 1991 to 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton, from every vantage point politically was considered a political insider. As First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, world traveler for the Clinton Foundation, and a multimillionaire, Secretary Clinton had very little in common with this voting bloc. (Galski, 2016) The only element that connected her with Hispanic voters was that she was a-Democrata‖. The purpose of this paper is not to revisit the defeat of Secretary Clinton, rather this paper considers the election used as a backdrop in seeking to juxtapose the enthusiasm witnessed among many Hispanic voters for Secretary Clinton and their apathy for a young female Hispanic candidate in a local council bid in the 2017 election. Why could Hazleton Hispanic voters identify with Secretary Clinton and turn out for her in significant numbers, but not a twenty-nine-year-old Hispanic female from their own city? Hazleton, Pennsylvania is a small city with a rapidly growing Hispanic population of nearly 60% (Lussenhop, 2016). A young woman of Dominican background, Nicol Soto, worked tirelessly to win a primary nomination for a city council seat. She could not mobilize the same Hispanic wave that six months earlier led to Secretary Clinton defeating Donald Trump in the city of Hazleton.(Politico Podcast: Live Presidential Electlion Results, 2016). A favorite son, Congressman Lou Barletta, a strong Republican Trump supporter, also showed weakness in his home town because of the Hispanic voters who turned out. While the Congressman easily won re-election, he only narrowly won his hometown by 36 votes (Galski, 2016). This paper is concerned with voting trends of Hazleton's Hispanic community. This community produced a blue spot in what became an overwhelming red county and state in the national election of 2016. Democrats both Native and Hispanic coordinated an effort of campaigning for Secretary Clinton that has not been seen in quite a while in that region. Yet, when a Hispanic woman ran as a candidate in a local primary election, the community did not come out to support her. To examine effectively the situation, this author covered the following points in this paper. First,the author considered voting differences in local, state and national primary elections and investigated to identify in which elections Spanish-speakers were most likely to participate and vote. Second, Spanish-speaking voters in Hazleton were compared to communities in which Hispanic residents have lived nearly fifty years longer to investigate whether duration of residency and comfort living there would make a difference in the amount of participation. Third, the author reviewed election results, with an emphasis on primary elections for the last seven years to observe voting trends in the municipality in question. An investigation of which wards first developed concentrations of Spanish-speakers were compared to increasing number of wards where Spanish-speakers make up significant voting blocks in 2017. Finally, the author identified key characteristics that may identify when and how a significant and at times a majority of a city's population can rise from a sleeping giant to an active one on the local political scene.
The 1996 Chicago Latino Registered Voter Political Survey
Journal of Poverty, 2000
The Latino population in the United States has been expanding at a tremendous rate in recent decades and as the number of Latinos in the United States grows, so does their potential for influencing American politics grow. Yet, we have a very limited understanding of Latino civic engagement, political behavior, and public policy opinions. This article presents the results of a survey of 408 registered Latino voters in Chicago, Illinois. The findings advance a multidimensional understanding of Latino political behaviors and attitudes through the examination of multiple measures of political participation and opinions concerning political parties and public issues such as welfare reform, immigration, naturalization and official language policy, bilingual education, capital punishment, gun control, and affirmative action.
A Latino on the Ballot: Explaining Coethnic Voting Among Latinos and the Response of White Americans
Journal of Politics, 2010
In recent campaigns, candidates have sought to attract votes from the growing Latino electorate through ethnic cues. Yet, we know very little about the impact of appeals to ethnicity. This article examines the role that ethnic cues play in shaping the political opinions and choices of Latinos, as well as the response of non-Hispanic White Americans (Anglos). We take up the simplest of group cues, the ethnicity of the candidate. We argue that candidate ethnicity is an explicit ethnic cue that alters the political choices of Latinos through priming of their ethnic linked fate, but only affects Anglos through spreading activation of primed ethnic attitudes to national identity considerations. Evidence from an experiment that manipulated exposure to candidate ethnicity information provides evidence for these claims. Our results help to explain coethnic voting among Latinos and resistance to Latino candidates among Anglos.
The Impact of Perceived Representation on Latino Political Participation
Center For the Study of Democracy, 2002
governing choices made by political elites, especially in a democracy. Even when elected officials derive information about the public's preferences by other means, such as opinion polling, their responsiveness ultimately depends upon the prospect of participation. Unhappy constituents may, for example, vote them out of office, or help their opponents campaign, or demonstrate, while happy ones may vote or campaign for them, give money, or come to a rally. Conversely, members of the public expect someone to represent them in the halls of decision-making. Scholars typically treat political representation separately from political participation. However, they both link political elites with mass publics (cf. Uhlaner, 1989). As we shall argue theoretically and demonstrate empirically below, individuals who feel represented are also more politically participatory. We make the empirical case by examining the political participation of Latinos. Over and above any theoretical concerns, there is good reason to be interested in the political participation of the Latino population in the United States. Latinos are the single largest ethnic "minority" group in the United States as of the 2000 census, and the Latino share of the population is growing. At the same time, Latinos make up a much smaller fraction of political participants than of the population. Partly this reflects the large number of noncitizens and the youthfulness of the population. But other factors might be in play as well. The future of American politics will be shaped in substantial measure by how active a political role Latinos play. Predicting that depends upon understanding which factors shape the current levels of involvement. While there has been previous research on Latino political participation, summarized below, much remains to be learned. Latinos also provide an especially interesting population for exploring the relationship between representation and participation. The population as a whole has some characteristics of a politically marginalized group. Moreover, while there are some descriptive representatives, the majority of Latinos still have primarily non-Latino elected officials. On the other hand, there have been extensive attempts to organize Latinos along various ethnic and national origin lines. Moreover, a number of public policies in recent years have specific salience for Latinos, leading to high potential for politicization of ethnic or national origin identity. Participation provides information and pressure from the mass public to the political elite.