| LATINO VOTERS LIVED UP TO THE CHALLENGE |
| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Monday, November 15 2004 |
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| It worked. The appeal to Latino voters to come out of the woodwork and let their presence be felt at the polls exceeded all expectations. A record number of Hispanics voted. Latinos gained yet another seat in the House of Representatives, and for the first time in almost three decades, we have not one but two Latinos in the Senate. But most importantly, Latinos proved to be a political force that can no longer be ignored or taken for granted.
It will take some meticulous analysis of the Hispanic vote to produce a more accurate picture of how they voted, but for now there are some preliminary numbers flying around, based on exit polls, that give us an idea.
First of all, it is believed that 9.2 million Hispanics went to the polls on Nov. 2. That's a 56 percent increase from 2000, when 5.9 million Latinos voted. The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials had projected a 7 million Latino voter turnout; it now thinks the final figure will be closer to 8 million.
One direct consequence of this is that Latinos made some gains in political representation. The number of Latinos in the House of Representatives grows from 22 to 23 with the election of John Salazar in Colorado. His brother Ken Salazar becomes the first Hispanic U.S. senator from Colorado, and Mel Martinez from Florida will be the first U.S. senator of Cuban descent. At the state level, the number of Latinos serving in lower state houses grows from 161 to 171 after this election. And, of course, the nomination of White House Counsel Antonio Gonzales to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general should also be considered a triumph for Hispanics.
How Latinos voted in the presidential race is the subject of hot debate. According to the William C. Velasquez Institute in California -- formerly known as the Southwest Voter Registration Project -- Sen. John Kerry got 67.7 percent of the vote, while President George W. Bush received 31.4 percent.
However, the disparity between those numbers and others revealed by news organizations, which contend that 54 percent voted for Kerry and 45 percent for Bush, question the legitimacy of the Velasquez Institute's survey. Some experts on the matter even say that Bush's real number is somewhere between 37 percent and 42 percent. Either way, although Kerry got a majority of the Hispanic vote, it is a significant increase for President Bush, who received 31 percent of their vote in 2000.
It should come as no surprise. While it's true that traditionally Latinos have voted Democrat, there's a series of factors that made the Hispanic electorate of 2004 different -- for one, the enormous amount of new voters who became citizens after 9/11. Many of them did not have a commitment to either party; their vote was up for grabs, and Republicans were better at capturing their attention.
It's possible that Democrats failed to realize that even though Latinos tend to be somewhat liberal on social issues, they are more conservative when it comes to family values and religion. Neither party showed simple solutions to the issues that most concern Latinos: jobs, education and health care. So, because many of them came to the United States running away from political turmoil and violence in their own countries, security moved up on their list of priorities.
But the reason for the shift toward the right among Hispanics could be a lot simpler than all that. Raul Romero, one of Bush's top advisers on Hispanic issues, attributes the president's gains to the fact that he connects well with the Hispanic community. Democratic pollster Sergio Bendixen agrees: "When all was said and done," he said, "President Bush's personality had more weight than the issues emphasized by the Democratic Party."
As the Latino electorate continues to grow and the parties look toward 2008, the real beneficiaries of the 2004 election could be the voters themselves. Democrats suffered the consequences of years of taking the Latino vote for granted, and now they're going to have to work hard to regain their allegiance. And if Republicans want to continue to gain ground with the Latino community, they will have to make good on their campaign promises. |
