Latino Participation Essay

The Latino culture in respect to the rest of the United States is a true phenomenon. The numbers of Latinos coming into the United States is steadily growing, with the Spanish language competing with the English language for usage. Latinos are also creating a big impact on the world of politics; their numbers are not only viewed as a wanted asset but as “game changer” to politics. However, there are key factors that influence the voting patterns of Latinos and how they themselves interact in politics. Taking a look at interrelating factors can show Latino’s pattern in voting participation. The strongest predictors of Latino voting turnouts will be based on a strong ethnic background and socioeconomic status coupled with gender.
Latinos face

a certain minority status even though they are growing in the U.S. Many Latinos become naturalized while larger majorities are being born here, yet they may face the same type of discouragement to vote. Language barriers, citizenships and decreased mobilization for voting are among the top factors. Looking at the voting polls in 2008, Hillary Clintons’ use of Latino supporters and outreach specified for Latinos gained her the needed traction against Obama and more votes from the Latino group. Latinos felt that they could relate to Clinton more than with Obama. “For Obama the opposite was true: he lost traction among those who placed a high value on Latino campaign outreach” (Barreto and Segura 16). Since Clinton had more local Latino officials in more states “vouching for her in campaign events and ads than Obama did” she won the Latino votes (Barreto and Segura 16). While both Obama and Clinton did win Latino votes as both candidates appealed to their current situations. Pro-Immigration and Latinos that received government help such as Cuban Americans showed that increase of support for either candidates. While Latinos do not share the “linked by fate” characteristic that African Americans share, they are unified by their “Spanish language and their Roman Catholic Tradition, history of Spanish Colonialism…” (Barreto and Segura 29). This solidarity turns out to be true, African Americans and Latinos sharing this commonality created the increase in votes for Obama versus McCain.
The same ideas of participation can be seen in the article Latino Politics: Gender, Participation and Leadership (Montoya et al. 2003). While the article goes into depth about Latinas specifically, the reasons for Latina turnouts are similar to the reading in the article Latino American (Barreto and Segura 2014). “[T]he most consistent predictors of turnout across all national origin groups are interest in politics, church attendance, and organizational and school involvement…” (Montoya et al. 3). As was discussed in the previous article, an involvement in the political social sphere as well as socioeconomic status has an impact on the voting turnout for Latinos. There is also the similarity of party identification among Latinos. Both articles concur that Latinos tend to side with the Democratic Party, but among the genders there is a slight difference. Results found in Texas and California suggests that Mexican women are less likely to side with Republicans than men are, as much as an 18% point gap between men and women (Montoya et al. 3). While this could be attributed to gender roles, Latinas tend to put emphasis on the home, children and school while men tend to be the bread winners; however, there is still few consistent gender difference when it comes to political participation.
As the first article discussed the need for Latinos to feel related to, as Hilary used many local Latino promoters in her campaign, the same can be said for Latino’s seeing their peers get involved in politics themselves.

“[R]elationships play an important role in women’s psychological development and adaptation to sociopolitical roles” (Montoya et al. 6). An argument could be made for Hilary Clinton that in the previous article she was able to relate to Latina’s on a personal level thus gaining more overall Latino votes versus Obama. The concept of being empowered vs power alone is what drives Latinas and other women in political areas to fill those positions. Again the topic of unity, ethnic background is put into focus for analysis of voting outcomes. While most Latinos do stand united for a majority of topics, there are differences in the subgroups. For example, Puerto Rican and Mexican women identify closely to the Democratic Party while Cuban women tend to side with Republicans (Montoya et al. 3). Both articles clearly see a common ground for Latinos as a whole, their views on certain politics and politicians, clearly favoring a Democratic point of view. Particularly those Democrats that hold Latino values in high regards, utilizing Latino’s in their political campaigns and reaching out to the local level of Latino community. While there may be some differences among the subgroups in the Latin world, there is still a share of beliefs and

ideals.
Many factors affect different minorities such as African Americans, women of color, people with disabilities and especially the Latino’s in the United States. Latino’s are of special interests as they are beginning to shape the political world today. While not much research has been done on Latino’s in politics, there are some clear understandings. Latino’s place a very high value on being understood with the issues they face today, their value of home, school, family and other social aspects that shape the way they vote and their overall impact on modern laws and politicians today.