Why this is important?
Latinos make up 35% of the voting-age population but 22% of the state’s likely voters. Therefore, it is important that they get to the polls. Specialists agree that apathy is due to the lack of promotion and the mistake of sending the wrong message and the issues that matter to them.
There is not a lot of excitement over November’s election so leaders fear Latino turnout will be low. But they say, in reality, this election is extremely important. “State and local elected leaders sometimes have a bigger impact on our daily lives than somebody at the presidential level”.
The bottom line, Latino voters can make a big difference in elections, but they have to go to the polls in higher percentages.
Mindy Romero, founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California. “We are not seeing the gaps in turnout reduce between white and Latino, white and Black, white and Asian American voters.”
A Votebeat analysis found racial gaps in turnout during the 2020 general election, and Latinos especially lagged behind, Cal Matters reported in 2020. In areas with large communities of color, about 70% of registered voters cast a ballot. In primarily white areas, 87% of voters did.
“In any conceivable dimension, we’ve made voting easier in California,” said Eric McGhee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “What we know from decades of research on voting is that older people, wealthier people, more educated people, more settled people, such as homeowners – they all vote at higher rates.”
White people make up 41% of California’s voting-age population but 54% of the state’s likely voters, the Public Policy Institute of California reported last year. Latinos make up 35% of the voting-age population but 22% of the state’s likely voters.
Young voters are often misperceived as too apathetic or too self-absorbed to care about elections. But rather than being dismissive of politics, some of the country’s least experienced voters say they feel unprepared to make such weighty choices.
Oftentimes young voters say they didn’t have enough information or campaigns didn’t contact them, said Wasay Rasool, a lead strategist for Avalanche Insights, an information technology company that conducts polls.
Rasool and other experts say voters would be better served by a more robust civic education, and by politicians visiting campuses and offering up strong and savvy social media presences to highlight issues that directly affect young people.
For about 35% of young people, the biggest barrier to voting is politicians not delivering on the issues that most resonate with them, according to a national poll Avalanche Insights recently conducted with Rise Inc., an organization that advocates for free college, and Voto Latino, a nonprofit that aims to galvanize Latino and Hispanic youth to vote.
“If you talk to almost any politician, you would think that immigration is the only issue that we care about,” said Gary Acosta, CEO of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. Acosta says, in reality, immigration isn’t even a top five concern for Latino voters right now. And a recent poll from Unidos US and Mi Familia Vota supports that.
“Inflation certainly is number one, health care is among those, and gun violence,” said Clarissa Martinez with Unidos US. She also says, for the first time ever, abortion is a top concern with 3/4ths of those surveyed saying that regardless of their personal beliefs, they think it’s wrong to make abortion illegal.
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