Now It’s Official: Latinos and Asians Have Clout in the Voting Booth

Jorge Rivas

Now It’s Official: Latinos and Asians Have Clout in the Voting Booth

Now it’s official: Roughly one out of every ten voters was Latino or Asian in the 2008 election.

Last Thursday the Immigration Policy Center released “Latino and Asian Clout in the Voting Booth,” a fact check report that “shows how much the electoral power of racial and ethnic minorities increased” between the 2004 and 2008 elections.

With Census Bureau data released last month, the report finds:

The number of Latino voters increased by 28.4% (or 2.2 million) from 7.6 million in 2004 to 9.8 million in 2008.
The number of Asian voters increased by 21.3% (or 589,000) from 2.8 million in 2004 to 3.4 million in 2008.
The number of black voters increased by 15.1% (or 2.1 million) from 14 million in 2004 to 16.1 million in 2008.
In six of the nine states that went from “red” to “blue” in the 2008 election (Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Carolina), the number of Latino and Asian voters significantly exceeded Barack Obama’s margin of victory over John McCain.

The Immigration Policy Center (IPC) is the research arm of the American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF). IPC was established in 2003 with the mission to provide policymakers, academics, the media, and the general public with access to accurate information about the effects of immigration on the U.S. economy and society.

Posted at 4:52 AM, Aug 17, 2009 in Alliance Building | Demographics | Permalink | View Comments