Analyzing the Hispanic Vote in 2012

After reading dozens of mainstream media newspaper and national magazine stories about the so-called “crucial” Latino November vote, I have sadly concluded that my journalism colleagues either can’t do simple math or have decided to forego fundamental research.

The stories are the same. If presumptive GOP candidate Mitt Romney expects to persuade Hispanics to support his candidacy, then he needs to begin a significant outreach program effective immediately. On the other hand, if President Obama is counting on as much success with Hispanic voters in 2012 as he had in 2008, he needs to get busy with his own appeal to that bloc.

While both candidates want to do well with all demographic subsections, to repeat ad nauseum that Hispanics will determine the next president is laugh out loud absurd.

To start at the beginning, in the 2010 mid-term election Hispanics represented only 6.9 percent of the electorate. The share of the Latino population eligible to vote is smaller than it is among any other group. Just 42.7 percent of the nation’s Latino population is voting eligible (older than 18) while more than three-in-four (77.7 percent) of whites, two-thirds of blacks (67.2 percent) and more than half of Asians (52.8 percent) are eligible.

Read More at Western Journalism. By Joe Guzzardi.