Where are all the Latino voters?
According to last Census, Hispanics and Latinos are supposed to make up 17% of the U.S. population, but they were only 8% of voters according to the CNN exit poll. What happened to the rest of the Hispanic and Latino voters?
There are two possibilities:
1. They identified as white.
2. They stayed home.
As an additional point, it’s worth noting that blacks have very strong voter turnout. This is because blacks have very strong racial solidarity, and if Democrats can convince blacks that Republicans are out to get them and they need to stick it to the racists by going out and voting for Democrats, then it’s very effective at getting blacks out to the polls.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
“As an additional point, it’s worth noting that blacks have very strong voter turnout. This is because blacks have very strong racial solidarity, and if Democrats can convince blacks that Republicans are out to get them and they need to stick it to the racists by going out and voting for Democrats, then it’s very effective at getting blacks out to the polls.”
As long as Republicans keep advocating voter suppression tactics designed to make it more difficult for blacks and poor people to vote, it will not be hard to convince blacks of that.
MikeCA
November 5, 2014 at 5:52 PM
Romney lost because black turnout was unusually high while white turnout disappointed. Other minorities were irrelevant. Hispanics were concentrated in California and Texas while Asians were 2-3% nationwide, and most of that was in California.
The Undiscovered Jew
November 5, 2014 at 7:10 PM
“As long as Republicans keep advocating voter suppression tactics designed to make it more difficult for blacks and poor people to vote.”
Hah hah!! Nice one! Oh, hey wait. So what you’re saying is that blacks and poor people are too stupid to achieve even the most basic level of civilized behavior by having some form of identity? You RACIST!
peterike2
November 5, 2014 at 8:52 PM
Lol on myself. *Identification, not “identity.” Though that’s probably true too.
peterike2
November 5, 2014 at 8:52 PM
This is the subtext. Our voters are too stupid and lacking in foresight to get a voter ID.
CamelCaseRob
November 6, 2014 at 1:07 PM
There are a significant numbers of poor people who do not have drivers licenses. Many of these people are elderly or disabled and do not drive, so they have no need for a drivers license. Because they are very poor, they do not fly or do other things that require a driver license.
Drivers licenses use to be about driving. If you could pass the written and driving test, you could get a drivers license. Drivers licenses have now morphed into documents to prove your citizenship. Most states now require a birth certificate to get a drivers license. A significant number of poor people, especially in the South, do not have birth certificates.
Getting a birth certificate can be very challenging. Issuing birth certificates is under local control, state or county usually. Localities make up their own rules for issuing birth certificates. Localities can require ID to prove you are the person whose birth certificate you are requesting, but without the birth certificate, you cannot get the kind of ID required to get the birth certificate. A catch 22 situation.
There also is the issue that the government simply does not have birth records for some people. I remember talking with a elderly woman who was trying to get some evidence of her age so she could get Medicare. I think she was in her 80s and anyone looking at her could clearly tell she was over 65, but the county court house where her birth records were kept burned down in the 1940s and at that time they had not yet started keeping duplicate birth records at the state level in that state. As a result, she could not get a birth certificate.
In the South even into the 1930s many poor mothers gave birth at home. They could not afford to go to a hospital. Many of those home births were never recorded. Those people can never get a birth certificate.
There are many poor, elderly people of all races that fall into this category. We are basically changing long established rules for voting. You need a drivers license or equivalent ID card. To get that card you need a birth certificate.
Many people lived their whole life never needing a copy of their birth certificate. Republicans are pushing to change the rules precisely because it is mainly poor and minorities that do not have birth certificates.
MikeCA
November 6, 2014 at 4:53 PM
Theoretically, you’re not allowed to have a job without the same documentation. So I don’t believe that people lack the ability to identify themselves at the polling place.
Lion of the Blogosphere
November 6, 2014 at 6:13 PM
@MikeCA You’re drawing a pretty broad brush. Even people who had home births were able to get birth certificates. The fact is, if there was a real issue with identification, it would have come up years ago for eligibility for Social Security and (as you yourself mentioned) Medicare. The fact that having documentation drawing Social Security and Medicare ISN”T a problem, only for voting, seems to indicate it’s not a real problem.
The real problem is that its’ a trojan horse for voter fraud.
Mike Street Station
November 6, 2014 at 7:42 PM
@Lion: As I said, most of these people are elderly or disabled. They do not have jobs so don’t need the id for a job.
@Mike Street Station: I recently turned 65. While I am still working and have employer based health insurance, I am eligible for Medicare. I opted out of Medicare part B & D, which charge premiums, because I have employer insurance, but I am automatically covered for part A and now have a Medicare card. I did not have to show anyone an ID or my birth certificate. In fact I just registered online. The government already had my birth date from my Social Security number. If you got a Social Security number many years ago (my parents got mine shortly after I was born), then you apparently do not need a birth certificate or drivers license to collect Social Security or Medicare benefits.
It is true that those home births could have been registered. There may even have been laws requiring them to be registered, but in poor areas in the South, frequently they were not registered in the 1930s and perhaps even later.
By the way, birth certificates are easily forged, and in many jurisdictions it is not that difficult to get a real birth certificate for someone else. There are around 6,000 entities issuing birth certificates in the US. The federal government issues recommendations for birth certificates, but there is no requirement that birth certificates follow those recommendations. The federal government has established standards for birth certificates used to obtain passports, which forced entities issuing birth certificates to at least meet those standards. Many birth certificates issued in California or Texas before the 1990s do not meet those standards.
In my original post I forget to mention all the additional problems that women who change their name when they marry face. They may have a birth certificate, but it has a different name than their drivers license or other ID. This then requires yet additional documents to prove the name change. Kansas now requires proof of citizenship to register to vote. For a woman that changed her name, a birth certificate is not enough. She also has to provide proof of the name change, probably with some kind of official marriage certificate.
MikeCA
November 7, 2014 at 1:59 PM
RE Latinos
The race data is self identified, and a lot of “latinos” self identify as white a lot of the time.
As an additional point, it’s worth noting that blacks have very strong voter turnout. This is because blacks have very strong racial solidarity, and if Democrats can convince blacks that Republicans are out to get them and they need to stick it to the racists by going out and voting for Democrats, then it’s very effective at getting blacks out to the polls.
This is undoubtedly true, but my hunch says that a lot of “black voter turnout” is basically ballot stuffing. Dems are always running huge drives to register lots of black voters in poor areas, the polls in the ghetto are staffed by all dem people and republican watchers are loath to go there (and when they do, are easily intimidated) it would be very easy for a democrat operative to see who hasn’t shown up to actually vote and then dump in hundreds of ballots in those peoples’ names. This is just speculation based on how easy it would be and how little sense it makes that blacks would have had a high turnout this year.
Anonymous
November 5, 2014 at 6:02 PM
In 2012 there were several precincts in African American areas that voted 100% for Obama. In other words, not a single vote for any other Presidential candidate. Hard to believe there isn’t at least one joker in a precinct.
Mike Street Station
November 5, 2014 at 9:00 PM
These would be many of the the same people who easily rip off the IRS for billions of dollars each year with fraudulent and fake tax returns.
E. Rekshun
November 6, 2014 at 11:39 AM
What percentage of Latinos in the United States are actually genetically white? Does anyone know?
F
November 5, 2014 at 6:04 PM
There’s no definitive estimate, but going off personal experience I’d say 10 to 15% of Hispanics are well over 90% white.
The Undiscovered Jew
November 5, 2014 at 7:07 PM
And don’t forget that over half of all Mexican-Americans list their race as white, a percentage that was larger in the 2010 Census as compared to 2000. And this despite the fact that most Mexican people are visibly mestizo or even Indio.
Peter
ironrailsironweights
November 5, 2014 at 10:15 PM
“And don’t forget that over half of all Mexican-Americans list their race as white, a percentage that was larger in the 2010 Census as compared to 2000.”
That’s b/c on the census “white” is their race and “latino” is their ethnicity. They don’t identify as whites in everyday life.
Dan Diaz, the husband of Brittany Maynard, the woman who committed euthanasia, is a striking example of white hispanic. A pic: http://i.imgur.com/W4Pzkpa.jpg
That guy looks whiter than I do. He probably identifies as white.
“but going off personal experience I’d say 10 to 15% of Hispanics are well over 90% white.”
It’s not nearly that high in Texas. Perhaps of those with college degrees.
anon
November 6, 2014 at 3:13 AM
All Latinos are genetically white.
J1
November 6, 2014 at 8:35 AM
“And don’t forget that over half of all Mexican-Americans list their race as white, a percentage that was larger in the 2010 Census as compared to 2000.”
They don’t exclusively list their race as white and genetically they aren’t white. Not being genetically white (or at least close to white) means they’ll develop the same inner city pathologies as other dumb minorities and end up voting for the party of welfare.
It’s not nearly that high in Texas. Perhaps of those with college degrees.
The Southwest had a population of white Spanish colonists. They’re proportionally fewer of the Hispanic population because of recent immigration trends and because many of them married into the rest of the white population. But there are some left like congressman John Salazar of Colorado.
Hispanic whiteness varies by which Latin American country their ancestry is from as well as income and education. Florida’s wealthy South American Hispanics prefer Republicans like Cubans because they’re often over 90% white. California seems to attract the dumbest Indios because of their welfare policies.
* Technically Brazil is Lusitanic. On the other hand Portuguese and Spanish culture is so close it’s arguably not wrong to clasify them as Hispanic.
The Undiscovered Jew
November 6, 2014 at 6:16 PM
OT: Bill Gates on value transferrence:
http://fortune.com/2014/10/15/bill-gates-income-inequality/?xid=ob_rss
Camlost
November 5, 2014 at 6:36 PM
Lion is an interesting writer, and a very good blogger, but this “value transference” stuff just isn’t a coherent model of the world; it’s just his opinion (shared by many of his readers) on what professions do and do not add value to the world.
Lion is smart enough that I would consider revising my opinion if really tried to formalized this notion, but until he attempts to do this we shouldn’t indulge this concept.
muelleauzz
November 5, 2014 at 7:18 PM
Formalization would mean reading about rent seeking and related subjects, of which there is a vast corpus. Moaning about value transference is more fun, if a bit bolshie.
I think more people would be annoyed with rent seeking if it was called value transference. It’s a great piece of jargon.
Glengarry
November 6, 2014 at 2:25 AM
According to last Census, Hispanics and Latinos are supposed to make up 17% of the U.S. population,
10 million Hispanics are illegal. At least that many are legal but not citizens. We should offer green card buyouts, $100,000 per family member, to return before they seek citizenship.
The Undiscovered Jew
November 5, 2014 at 7:04 PM
Anthony G Brown must be steaming mad knowing that he had to give up white women to make himself electable for major office… and then lost. He didn’t make out as well as his patron Obama, who had to forego all of the SWPL and cosmopolitan white ladies he used to date in order to marry an “authentically” black wookie…. but at least his sacrifice paid off in that Obama actually won the Presidency.
Camlost
November 5, 2014 at 7:05 PM
1. They identified as white.
Browner Hispanics vote less frequently than the whitest Hispanics. The latter usually vote Republican.
The Undiscovered Jew
November 5, 2014 at 7:05 PM
The 62-36 breakdown of the Hispanic vote gels with my observation that about one-third of Hispanics blend into the American middle class.
Fitzgerald
November 6, 2014 at 12:23 AM
Hispanic voting patterns follow how genetically white they are. Their whiteness, or lack of it, determines how assimilable they are.
The Undiscovered Jew
November 6, 2014 at 6:18 PM
They are disproportionally under 18?
Dave
November 5, 2014 at 7:26 PM
Dave is right. The median age of Mexican Americans is only 25, versus 37 for Americans overall.
Source: Pew Research Center.
http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/median-age-for-hispanics-is-lower-than-median-age-for-total-u-s-population/
Mark Caplan
November 5, 2014 at 9:59 PM
Nate Silver on pre-election poll bias:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-were-skewed-toward-democrats/
Camlost
November 5, 2014 at 7:27 PM
Turnout in California and Texas is particularly low in a midterm year like this and where those states’ important races were mostly landslides. A disproportionate number of Latinos live in those or similar states; I’d check state by state results for some more contested elections before concluding a general trend.
Jackson
November 5, 2014 at 8:28 PM
Why aren’t Asians voting for the GOP more? What are they seeing in the Democrats? And if we looked more closely, would we find, as I suspect, that Koreans and Japanese lean more GOP than the overall Asian numbers?
Truth
November 5, 2014 at 8:44 PM
Does the SBA give out loans to start restaurants?
dago red
November 6, 2014 at 11:39 AM
Yes, take a look at who runs Dairy Queen franchises nowadays.
Camlost
November 6, 2014 at 10:37 PM
“As an additional point, it’s worth noting that blacks have very strong voter turnout. This is because blacks have very strong racial solidarity, and if Democrats can convince blacks that Republicans are out to get them and they need to stick it to the racists by going out and voting for Democrats. . . ” ———————————–
Last estimate I saw blacks, though 13% of the population, only account for 3% of income tax revenues. Yet they vote most consistently for the party promising to extract the maximum amount from this revenue source. Plus, they are almost certain to be disproportionate users of income transfers not to mention other government largess. The math is pretty easy here; if you are black and even if you are doing well, far too many people in your immediate circle depend upon the government for their needs and depend upon transferring wealth from whites/Asians to people who will otherwise be hitting you up for money. It is in your best interest to temper this pressure by voting the income transfer ticket. The rest, all the racism nonsense, is just a face saving cover story.
The truly remarkable fact about this graph is the Asian vote. Are things changing for our Asian brothers?
Curle
November 5, 2014 at 8:53 PM
And boom goes the dynamite. For blacks, it’s all about Gibs Me Dat White Man’s Money, Sucka.
browndar
November 6, 2014 at 5:00 PM
Where are all the Latino voters? The newly arrived ones are cutting grass, shoveling dirt, cleaning dishes, making beds in hotels, working in fast food restaurants. The second and third generation women are sitting home raising brats with massive assistance from Uncle Sam. Why the hell should they vote? America is already paradise for them.
peterike2
November 5, 2014 at 8:57 PM
We need the Latinos regardless. They are the only group who will replace useless Tyrone and his lazy gang. Blacks are more threatened by Hispanics than Whites because most of the menial and low skill work is being taken up by Juan & Jose.
JS
November 6, 2014 at 10:12 AM
Interesting little statistic on the chart: 52% of American Indians went Republican? They are such a tiny percentage of the electorate I don’t hear much about their voting preferences but I just assumed they were part of the I-hate-whitey coalition that usually votes Democrat.
Mike Street Station
November 5, 2014 at 9:04 PM
Now they’ve got casino money. Though I imagine it is tax free (but I don’t know).
Curle
November 6, 2014 at 12:10 AM
Latino voters have a history of light voter turnout, and their percentage of Republican voters has stayed in the same range pretty consistently in recent decades. So their electoral clout is much overrated at this point.
The GOP has been romancing Latino voters for decades and pandering to them, claiming that they voted something like 43 percent for G.W. Bush, though that was later debunked.
Latinos don’t seem like they are very engaged in the political process, and for now, that’s good news. Though their activist groups make a lot of noise they don’t participate fully. How can they when most are not very literate in English or informed about our system?
As to their percentage of White ancestry, I doubt very much that 10 percent are White. Maybe 5 percent. The only state in which there are many White Hispanics might be Florida, with the Cubans, but since most of the data on race is based on self-identification, the data is not very accurate.
rae9582
November 5, 2014 at 9:05 PM
Agreed. The percentage who identify as white is not a large percentage overall. In my district, Latinos are the largest percentage of eligible voters, then Asian, but the district is always won by someone Asian. There’s very little turn out even accounting for illegals in the population.
L
November 5, 2014 at 11:41 PM
That 17% number includes illegals.
Bread and Circuses
November 5, 2014 at 10:09 PM
I do think that many Hispanics and Lusitanics identify as White. White Americans have a one drop rule, but Hispanics and Lusitanics do not. Essentially, if you have 51% or more White ancestry in their countries, you are considered White. Lets face it; many Hispanics and Lusitanics have significant amounts of White DNA even if it isn’t 100%.
SC
November 5, 2014 at 10:40 PM
maybe this is all “explained” by immigration, but I doubt it.
a rising tide lifts all boats?
free trade will “free” Americans for higher wage jobs?
the baby boomers REALLY are the WORST generation.
QED!
if you vote GOP, you’re either stupid or evil. likely both.
First Ypres
November 5, 2014 at 11:12 PM
Both parties have backed free trade. Both parties have backed cheap foreign labor. The two politicians of the 80s and early 90s who opposed these policies were Gephart and Buchanan and both were soundly rejected by their respective parties. Arguably, they’ve been proved correct, but are you telling us you’re a Buchanan supporter now?
Curle
November 6, 2014 at 12:17 AM
Baby Boomers will be raped by the younger generations once the complete meltdown of American happens.
JS
November 6, 2014 at 10:09 AM
You kind of answered it with #1. That being said, (and contrary to what many non-Hispanics think) there’s far, far less solidarity between Hispanics, compared to Blacks.
A NYT article in May of this year discussed how more Hispanics are declaring themselves as white.
markus
November 6, 2014 at 12:13 AM
I also should add that Hispanics tend to be cynical when it comes to politics….a trait brought over from their parents countries’ of origin. Their kids, born and raised here, retain that attitude.
markus
November 6, 2014 at 12:17 AM
Blacks aren’t any more likely to get themselves out to vote than whites, and probably less so. But the Democrats know that if they can get a Black person to the polls, they’ve got his (or her) vote. They can’t count on that for anyone else – not even in states where party registration is public information, because non-Blacks might be ticket-splitters, or pissed off at a candidate, or something. So the Democrats put a *lot* of effort into getting black people out to the polls on election day.
Anthony
November 6, 2014 at 1:37 AM
CNN exit pollsters should know that “Latino” isn’t a race, anymore than “American” would be a race. How would you answer the question: Are you black, white, or American?
Mark Caplan
November 6, 2014 at 5:50 AM
White…
Anonymous
November 6, 2014 at 9:40 AM
Hispanics seem to be the least politically concerned of all the groups. They are the new Italians in America. I know that’s sounds a bit far fetched. But Hispanics come close to Guidos in terms of “I don’t care. I just want to make money and have fun”.
JS
November 6, 2014 at 10:08 AM
BY THE WAY, VOTING IS PROLE!
JS
November 6, 2014 at 10:31 AM
But buying politicians is very TOOS.
Curle
November 8, 2014 at 12:13 AM
Hispanics and Latinos are supposed to make up 17% of the U.S. population…
Not all Hispanics are Latino. Not all Latinos are Hispanic.
E. Rekshun
November 6, 2014 at 11:37 AM
If I were a 5’2″ peasant living underneath a narco-state elite, I’d want to be white too. Sometimes just checking the white box on a government form can make one happier if it helps one support a desired belief.
The coveted sexual partners, SWPL women, hate 5’2″ latino men. I’d check the white box too if it raised my status.
swpl in sheep's clothing
November 6, 2014 at 12:00 PM