BACKGROUND: In October of 2016, Jens Manuel Krogstad, reporting for the Pew Research Center, noted that a record 27.3 million Latinos were eligible to vote – representing nearly 12% of all those eligible to cast ballots in the United States. Growing by nearly four million voters since 2012, the Latino community has accounted for nearly 37 percent of the total growth in all eligible voters since President Obama’s reelection. Despite rapid expansion within the American electorate, a tradition of low-voter turnout has long pervaded the community and contributes to a striking underrepresentation of Latinos in the political discourse of the United States. Remarkably, 44 percent of Latino voters are millennials and represent 80 percent of the increase …show more content…
Even if Cropper’s attention to the intersectionality of the Latino identity was shrewd, the results of her study do little to comment on the variation of political opinions and political motivations in the various facets of the arguably all-too-encompassing Latino identity. While low voter turnout has historically diminished the impact of the Latino vote, Cropper’s research suggests that issues important to the Latino community are pivotal to galvanizing and essential to actuating this growing bloc. To this notion, increasingly polarizing political events will assuredly impact the collective identity of the Latino community. Furthermore, socially-minded millennial voters (who represent the largest generational voting bloc within the Latino community) are likely to posture the community for a greater predilection for political …show more content…
It can be inferred from both Cropper’s study and the 2016 election results that many Latinos are motivated to civic participation by general policy debates, rather than by politically motivated dialogues on race, ethnicity, and privilege. In engaging Latino voters, both Secretary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee relied on an appeal to emotion in 2016. While effective in many manifestations, the efforts to incite civic participation solely on morality and compassion were not ultimately potent in reference to the Latino community. The results of Cropper’s study repeatedly reveal that, presumably due to acculturation, Latino voters are both more internally divided on issues and more similar to the majority of the electorate than other marginalized populations. Though quite dated, Cropper’s study reports such issues as healthcare, government assistance, and immigration as key motivating factors for Latino
Harvest of the Empire is a valuable tool to gaining a better understanding of Latinos. This book helps people understand how varied Latino’s in the United States are. The author also helped give insight as to how Americans reacts to differences within itself. It does this by giving a description of the struggles that every Latino immigrant faced entering the United States. These points of emphasis of the book were explained thoroughly in the identification of the key points, the explanation of the intersection of race, ethnicity, and class, in addition to the overall evaluation of the book.
Willie Velasquez, founder of the Southwest Voter Registration Project, was responsible for the growth of Latino voters in Texas that started many years ago. His commitment to politics influenced many people to use their voice by voting. Texas has a rough voting history because over the years numbers have decreased and increased. Velasquez did influence the Latino community to go out and vote, but he didn’t necessary attract all of Texas’ attention. Regardless, number of voters isn’t what is important, what’s important is actually going out to vote.
The political future of Texas has been widely debated since the 2012 election of Pres. Barack Obama, since the state has always played a significant role in impacting national elections. Nationally, there was uneven support among minority voters in favor of the president and Democrats, and as a result there has been an increasing interest in the Hispanic population growth in Texas (Lawrence.) The speculation regards how the changing complexion of Texas voters will influence the political process, with political pundits broadly predicting that since the Latino population typically votes for Democr...
Diana Evans, Ana Franco, J.L. Polinard, James P. Wenzel, Robert D. Wrinkle. “Ethnic concerns and Latino party affiliation.” The Social Science Journal 49.2 (2012) 150–154
The United States national elections have been experiencing a steady decline of eligible voters showing up to vote. This steady decline has been ongoing since experiencing a significant increase in voter turnout from 1948 through 1960. Over the years there has been significant, meticulous research done to try to pinpoint the cause of the decline in voter turnout over years. All of this research has led to the production of an enormous number of literatures written on the perceived causes. The vast amount of literature produced has led to a number of competing explanations about this decline. The quest for the answer to the question of, why this decline in voter turnout, is very important for an overwhelming majority of Americans and our democratic system because the people/voters can only truly be represented by our government if all eligible voters go out and vote. For this paper I will examine four theories that attempt to explain the decline. The four theories that I will discuss are voting barriers, campaign contributions, negative campaign advertising, and finally the cultural explanation. However, through thorough exploration and critiques of the strengths and weaknesses of these four theories, we will find that the cultural explanation theory is currently the most persuasive theory in the group. Finally, I will also explore some reasons as to why citizens do vote as well.
Eleanor Roosevelt said, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” That statement holds strong for immigrants in America. Equal access to opportunities allows immigrants to achieve the American dream. Their success correlates with America’s success because of the contributions immigrants provide to America. Unfortunately, the current immigration policy in America denies many immigrants the American dream. It is crucial to understand the historical context of immigration in America. Initially, most immigrants were from Europe and were not restricted by any immigration laws. Now, most immigrants come from Latin America but are restricted to severe immigration laws. The Latino/a community is one of the most severely affected groups because the current immigration system disproportionally affects Latino/as. Recognizing how the experience of Latino/a immigrants have been both similar and different in the past from other immigrant groups and dispelling common misconceptions about Latino/as today bring an awareness how Latino/as are affected.
Among the many ways Americans can participate in politics, voting is considered one of the most common and important ways for Americans to get involved. The outcome of any election, especially at the national level, determines who will be making and enforcing the laws that all Americans must abide by. With this in mind one might assume that all Americans are active voters, but studies show the voter turnout is actually astonishingly low. With this unsettling trend it is important to know what statistics say about voter turnout as was as the four major factors that influence participation: Socioeconomic status, education, political environment, and state electoral laws, in order to help boost turnout in future elections.
1. How can we explain the low voting turnout, and low participation in general, in Texas? Consider how political culture, socio-economics, race/ethnicity, age, institutional laws etc. may affect these low rates.
The Reasons for low voter turnout in Texas is Legal Constraints, Demographic factors, Political structure, Party competition, Political culture.
Latinos have struggled to discover their place inside of a white America for too many years. Past stereotypes and across racism they have fought to belong. Still America is unwilling to open her arms to them. Instead she demands assimilation. With her pot full of stew she asks, "What flavor will you add to this brew?" Some question, some rebel, and others climb in. I argue that it is not the Latino who willingly agreed to partake in this stew. It is America who forced her ideals upon them through mass media and stale history. However her effort has failed, for they have refused to melt.
How people imagine themselves and are imagined by the larger society in relation to the nation is mediated through the representations of immigrants’ lives in the media. Media spectacles transform immigrants’ lives into virtual lives, which are typically devoid of nuances and subtleties of real lived lives. It is in this case that the media spectacle transforms a “worldview,” or a taken-for-granted understanding of the world, into an objective idea taken as “truth.” In their coverage of immigration events, the media give voice to commentators and spectators who often invoke one or more of the many truths in the Latino threat narrative to support arguments and justify actions. In this way, media spectacles objectify and dehumanize Latinos, thus making it empathize for them and easier to pass policies and laws to limit their social integration and obstruct their economic mobility. Through its coverage of events, the media help constr...
The United States presidential election of 2012 was the 57th presidential election. The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. The Democratic political leader was the incumbent President Barack Obama, and his candidate was vice President Joe Biden. Throughout this election the proportion of eligible voters who cast ballots shows that the rate was lower than in the past two presidential elections. Voter turnout decreased from 62.3 percent of eligible citizens voting in 2008 to an estimated 57.5 in 2012. The above calculation was also below the 60.4 percent in 2004 election, however above the 54.2 percent turnout in the 2000 election. Despite a rise of over eight million voters within the fitted population, turnout dropped from 131 million voters in 2008 to an estimated 126 million voters in 2012. When all ballots were computed, some 93 million eligible voters didn’t vote. There must be some contributing factors to see why there's a decline in voters’ turnout.
After carefully analyzing Table 4.1 and Table 4.2 in the Texas Politics Today textbook you can clearly analyze that the percentage of the voting age population in nonpresidential elections is significantly lower by at least ten percent than the percentage of the voting population in the general elections. Although voter turnout has been low it has been increasing little by little over the years which is a big benefit due to the fact more citizens have been taking in active role in the democracy of their society, even though the voter turnout is not where most people want it to be it is at least increasing. Another observation made from tables one and two is that although voter turnout has been increasing in the United States as a whole, voter turnout has been decreasing in Texas.
The United States ranks 138th out of 172 nations (Pinor) in terms of voter turnouts nationally. The United States should be setting an example of how a democracy should be elected and governed. Fortunately, we are able to elect the best city, state, and country leaders despite the low percentage of our eligible voters and registered voters that vote. Texas, the second largest population in the United States, ranks in the bottom five of all states nationally for voting. Some researchers argue that Texas ranks among the worst of all states. Below we will discuss how voting is measured, reasons for low voting in Texas, and factors that influence voter turnout in the United States.
“Don’t think that because we are here you can act like those fast American girls” the girls mother screamed. She did not want her daughter, a recent Puerto Rican immigrant, to resemble other American teenagers. She wanted her daughter to keep her Puerto Rican heritage, even as they immigrated to the U.S. and her daughter attempted to fit in with the other girls in school. This story, discussed in further detail later, describes the real challenge of assimilation for immigrants of different immigrant generations. This paper will discuss the assimilation of various groups of Latinos and different generations in the U.S. The level of assimilation of these different groups of Latinos to U.S. mainstream society depends on the location from which