Counting The Minority Vote

Counting the Minority Voter

This election year the presidential candidates are courting the minority voters like never before in history. States like Arizona, Florida, New Mexico and Ohio are considered swing states or battleground states. In many states voter registration drives have significantly increased the number of minority registered voters, particularly Hispanics, African Americans, and Asians. The candidates are well aware of this and are campaigning issues relevant to minority voters because they are prominent players in the political arena in the upcoming presidential election (Kamman).

According to the "Current Population Reports," a report put out by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2002, there are 25.1 million Hispanics in the United States. Of these 25.1 million, 15 million are U.S. citizens, of those 8.1 million are registered voters, of those 4.7 million reportedly voted. In percentages it relates in the following way: 52.5% of Hispanics are U.S. citizens, 30% of those Hispanics are registered to vote. Of the 30% that are registered to vote 57.9% reported to have voted. Hispanics have traditionally voted Democratic but in recent history a few more are swaying to the Republican Party. According to a poll analyzed by Steve Sailer 20 % of the Latino voters identifies themselves as Republican with the percentage of Latino voters voting Republican being slightly higher in Texas (the President's home state) while 49% identify themselves as Democratic. Republicans would want you to believe that they are the party that better identifies with Hispanic conservative values. Hispanics are conservative in nature but pick their political affiliation on issues of bread and butter. Social and political issues such as abortion, gay marriages and such are not a primary interest of the Latino voters. The media makes a big buzz about swaying the Latino voter but the reality of the matter is that realistically that is unlikely to happen(Sailer, Hispanic Republicans).

The U.S. Census Bureau's report put out in 2002 states that there are 24.5 million African Americans in the United States. Of these 22.9 million are U.S. citizens and only 14 million are registered voters. Of those 14 million who are registered to vote only 9.6 million voted. In percentages it breaks down as the following: 62.4% of African American U.S citizens are registered voters, 67.8 of those registered to vote voted, but overall only 42.3% of African American U.S. citizens voted. African Americans in the 2000 election the Republicans garnished a whopping 10% of the African American vote. In the Texas the percentage was even lower, 5%. The efforts put forth by the GOP to court the Black voters has been less than impressive. In reality the GOP know it looks bad to have a President who could only get 5% of the Black Texan vote (his home state). It is also a reality that it doesn't really matter if the percent doubled or tripled because the ratio between Black voters and White voters is so vast. It would serve the GOP better to go up one percentage point among White voters than ten or fifteen percentage points among black voters. The GOP knows this and so their efforts to "multi-culturalize" the Republican Party mainly