The Hispanic Vote in the 2008 Election

by Mark Hugo Lopez, Associate Director, Pew Hispanic Center

Hispanics voted for Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden over Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin by a margin of more than two-to-one in the 2008 presidential election, 66% versus 32%, according to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of exit polls from Edison Media Research as published by CNN.1 The Center’s analysis also finds that 8% of the electorate was Latino, as indicated by the national exit poll. This is unchanged from 2004.

Nationally, all Latino demographic sub-groups voted for Obama by heavy margins. According to the national exit poll, 64% of Hispanic males and 69% of Hispanic females supported Obama. Latino youth, just as all youth nationwide, supported Obama over McCain by a lopsided margin – 76% versus 19%.
Obama carried the Latino vote by sizeable margins in all states with large Latino populations. His biggest breakthrough came in Florida, where he won 57% of the Latino vote in a state where Latinos have historically supported Republican presidential candidates (President Bush carried 56% of the Latino vote in Florida in 2004). Obama’s margins were much larger in other states with big Latino populations. He carried 78% of the Latino vote in New Jersey, 76% in Nevada, 74% in California, and 73% in Colorado.

In an election year when voter participation rose across the board, Latinos maintained their share of the national vote, at 8%, according to the national exit poll. In several states, however, Latinos represented a larger share of voters this year than in 2004. The largest increases in the share of voters who are Hispanic occurred in the states of Colorado (9 percentage points higher), New Mexico (9 points higher), and Nevada (5 points higher), all three battleground states in this year’s election.

More information at http://pewhispanic.org/

U.S. Hispanic purchasing power $870 billion

The US Hispanic consumer market  is actually as big or bigger than the GDP [gross domestic product] of Mexico or Canada, Michael Barrera, CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, told CNN. It is the second largest economy in North America.

Here's some data:

45.5 million
The estimated Hispanic population of the United States as of July 1, 2007, making people of Hispanic origin the nation’s largest ethnic or race minority. Hispanics constituted 15 percent of the nation’s total population. In addition, there are approximately 3.9 million residents of Puerto Rico.

About 1
. . . of every two people added to the nation’s population between July 1, 2006, and July 1, 2007, was Hispanic. There were 1.4 million Hispanics added to the population during the period.

1.4 million
The number of grandparents who are in the labor force and also responsible for most of the basic needs of their grandchildren.

3.3%
Percentage increase in the Hispanic population between July 1, 2006, and July 1, 2007, making Hispanics the fastest-growing minority group.

102.6 million
The projected Hispanic population of the United States on July 1, 2050. According to this projection, Hispanics will constitute 24 percent of the nation’s population by that date.

2nd
Ranking of the size of the U.S. Hispanic population worldwide, as of 2007. Only Mexico (108.7 million) had a larger Hispanic population than did the United States (45.5 million). (Spain had a population of 40.4 million.)

64%
The percentage of Hispanic-origin people in the United States who are of Mexican background. Another 9 percent are of Puerto Rican background, with 3.4 percent Cuban, 3.1 percent Salvadoran and 2.8 percent Dominican. The remainder are of some other Central American, South American or other Hispanic or Latino origin.

27.6 years
Median age of the Hispanic population in 2007. This compares with 36.6 years for the population as a whole.


You can find more information at w.w.w.census.gov

Patricia Daumas is specialized in writing in Spanish for the US-hispanic markets.

Presidential Elections: Hispanic Likely Voters

Zogby Poll: Obama's Support among Hispanic Likely Voters Solidified

UTICA, New York- As we enter the final stretch of the presidential elections, Democratic candidate Senator Barack Obama appears to have solidified his support among the large majority of Hispanic likely voters -72% - while Republican candidate Senator John McCain holds just 22% support, according to a new Zogby International telephone survey of Latinos nationwide. Another 4.5% of Hispanic likely voters support other candidates while 2% remain undecided.

Zogby International's telephone survey of 704 Hispanic/Latino likely voters nationwide was conducted Oct. 16 - 30, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/-3.8 percentage points.

Obama maintains a majority of support among all age groups surveyed. Among 18-24 year olds, 80% favor Obama while McCain supports remains at about 9%. Surprisingly, Third Party candidate Ralph Nader is now supported by 8% of this youth vote. In Zogby's Oct. 20th poll, Nader had not even registered any support among these respondents. At the same time, Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, who had enjoyed 4% of support among these younger Hispanic voters in our earlier survey, no longer maintains any support in this subgroup. McCain's highest amount of support - 34% - is among the following age group, 55-69.

Obama has a majority of support in the Latino community among all income groups surveyed. The highest support for Obama - 77% - is among individuals who earn less than $25,000 while McCain's strongest support is among individuals who earn more than $100,000. Within this high-income Hispanic subgroup, McCain has lost significant support from 44% to 28% since our last survey.

Zogby.com

Latinos: Half of U.S. Population Growth

Since 2000 Hispanics have accounted for more than half (50.5%) of the overall population growth in the United States -- a significant new demographic milestone for the nation's largest minority group. During the 1990s, the Hispanic population also expanded rapidly, but in that decade its growth accounted for less than 40% of the nation's total population increase. In a reversal of past trends, Latino population growth in the new century has been more a product of the natural increase (births minus deaths) of the existing population than it has been of new international migration. As of mid-2007, Hispanics accounted for 15.1% of the total U.S. population.

Since 2000 many Latinos have settled in counties that once had few Latinos, continuing a pattern that began in the previous decade. But there are subtle differences in Hispanic settlement patterns in the current decade compared with those of the 1990s. The dispersion of Latinos in the new century has tilted more to counties in the West and the Northeast. Despite the new tilt, however, the South accounted for a greater share of overall Latino population growth than any other region in the new century. There is also an ever-growing concentration of Hispanic population growth in metropolitan areas. These findings emerge from the Pew Hispanic Center's analysis of the Census Bureau's 2007 county population estimates, supplemented by 1990 and 2000 county population counts from the Decennial Censuses.

The complete report"Latino Settlement in the New Century,"is available on the Pew Hispanic Center's website. Including a series of great web-based interactive maps that illustrate the size and spread of Hispanic population growth.

There are no Hispanics in Latin America.

Hispanic is a US term.  Only when they arrive to this country, all the people from Latin American and Spanish heritage fall under the Hispanic classification, despite their differences.  

US Hispanics share a common language due to ancestral ties to Spain, but US Hispanics are highly diverse. In the United States, Hispanics are both an indigenous and an immigrant community. 

Many are recent immigrants; but many have been here for more than one generation and even represent families that date back to the first Spanish settlements from the fourteenth century in what is now the United States, antedating by over a century the creation of a permanent English colony in North America.  

US Hispanics represent 20 Spanish-speaking nationalities; They are Colombian, Venezuelan, Mexican, Cuban, Argentinean, Hispanic Americans etc. and have lived through complex cultural, social, political, demographic, and economic patterns. 

This means differences by generation, legal status,  nationality and culture.  

There are also significant differences in vocabulary between regional varieties of Spanish, particularly in areas such as food products, everyday objects and clothes, and many Latin American varieties show considerable influence from Native American languages.

Advertisers face a significant challenge. And the discussion about the US-Hispanic advertising finding its own identity is still going on.

The US is the second largest Spanish-speaking region in the world. Currently, more Hispanics reside in the United States and its territories than  the population of Colombia — the largest Spanish-speaking country in South America — or in Spain itself. Only Mexico, with a population exceeding 100 million, has a larger Spanish-speaking population than the United States.