Pew Hispanic Center: Latino voters increased from 2004 to 2006

Posted by Elena del Valle on October 12, 2006

 

U.S. voters by ethnic group

Chart: HispanicMPR.com

According to the latest Pew Hispanic Center updates, 17.2 million Hispanics or 8.6 percent of voters, will be eligible to vote in 2006. That represents an increase of 7 percent over the 2004 election when there were 16 million Hispanic voters representing 8.2 percent of eligible voters in the country.

Native born Hispanics represent 75 percent of Latino voters while foreign born naturalized Hispanics represent 25 percent. Second generation Latino voters exhibited the largest percentage growth, 46 percent, among Hispanic voters since 2004. At the same time Latino voters represent a smaller share of the overall Hispanic population than similar voting segments in other ethnic groups because so many Latinos are underage or adult noncitizens.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center only 39 percent of Latinos may vote while 77 percent of nonHispanic whites and 65 percent of nonHispanic blacks are eligible to vote. In other words, of 200 million eligible voters, 150.8 are nonHispanic white, 24.1 million are nonHispanic black, 17 million are Latino and 7.4 million are nonHispanic Asian.  The Center estimates that between 10 million and 12.3 million Latinos will register to vote by November 2006.