The U.S. Census Bureau released its November voting data and one thing is clear: The so-called Latino Sleeping Giant is still snoozing – fewer than half of all eligible Hispanics turned out to vote in 2012.
After nearly a year of breathless reports about how Latinos were going to trip over themselves to get to the polls and vote against Mitt Romney’s hard-line immigration stance, the reality is less dramatic.
Yes, 11.2 million Latinos turned out to vote in 2012. But these headlines tell a different story: “As Hispanic Vote Lags, Millions of Votes Left on the Table” and “‘Record’ Hispanic Voter Turnout In 2012 a Misnomer, Census Numbers Show.”
The numbers don’t lie. According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of Latinos casting ballots went down to 48 percent from 49.9 percent in 2008.
Paul Taylor and Mark Hugo Lopez summarized it for the Pew Research Center: “Much was made right after the November election about the clout of the Hispanic vote (by, among others, the Pew Research Center). But the new Census Bureau data show that Hispanics’ turnout rate – just 48 percent – was far below that of whites (64.1 percent) or blacks (66.2 percent).”
They noted that because of population growth, the number of Latinos who voted for president did increase, but the number who were eligible but chose not to vote increased even more – by 2.3 million – from 9.8 million in 2008 to 12.1 million in 2012.
Fewer Latino voters bothered to vote in a contest featuring an incumbent Democrat and a Hispanically tone-deaf Republican candidate who could never quite get past “self-deportation” than in 2008.
One big misperception is that Latino voters care foremost about politicians’ stand on immigration, a notion that has been disproved time and again. And even though it is a topic of importance to them, Latinos do not speak with one voice on immigration, as a recent study by the Pew Research Center reaffirms.
When asked whether those living in the U.S. illegally should be allowed to stay legally, 9 percent of Latinos said “no” and another 6 percent didn’t know. Asked about giving those in the U.S. illegally a way to obtain legal status, 29 percent of Latino respondents said it would be “like rewarding them for doing something wrong” and another 10 percent weren’t sure.
Many Latinos see the Republican Party as a mix of a few opportunistic politicians trying to make inroads to win their votes and many xenophobes. It’s hard to assume otherwise after the controversy over the Heritage Foundation’s estimates on the cost of legalizing the 11 million immigrants living here illegally.
While some conservative leaders were rushing to register their disapproval with the report – which accounted for costs, but not benefits, of legalization – others were quiet after news outlets reported that one of co-authors of the study had written a Harvard Ph.D. dissertation contending that Hispanics have low IQs that will likely never reach parity with whites.
Perception, not voting power, is the Republican Party’s biggest Hispanic challenge.
Esther Cepeda’s email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @estherjcepeda.
