Hispanic Political Participation in the United States

Introduction

Every new election witnesses an increase in claims that the nation's Latin American population can exert political influence, along with growing endeavors to capitalize on that influence. For instance, the 2000 U.S. presidential election saw both parties reaching out significantly — and symbolically — to the Latin American population, with anticipated Electoral College victories in specific states banking on projected Latino voter turnout. Such assumptions imply a Latin American "vote" or, in general, Latin American "politics," which may be organized to express Latino say in election results (DeSipio 2006).

In this paper, Latino politics is examined through three guiding questions. First, the paper discusses the validity of singular Latino politics and whether it enjoys more predictive value than the politics of distinct Latin American-origin populations. In this context, politics broadly encompasses community-based activities within and outside the country, electoral politics, representation, influence, and agenda-setting — while acknowledging that extant literature concentrates disproportionately on the electoral dimension. Second, the paper scrutinizes both non-electoral and electoral politics, evaluates Latino political manifestation, and assesses the demographic and institutional obstacles hindering the Latin American population's bid to meet their occasionally unrealistic anticipated degree of influence. Third, the paper examines potential Latin American political trajectories for the next twenty years, maintaining that Latino politics has a highly ambiguous future that is still under construction. The overarching question guiding all three inquiries is: Does pluralism work as the ideal model for Latino political analysis?

Background and Literature Review

Candidates' campaign policies and speeches during the initial phase of the 2016 U.S. presidential primaries explicitly reflected the growing Latin American and Latino immigrant political presence. Given that immigration policy plays a key role in campaign dialogue, it is especially important to understand Latino political leanings' potential — whether U.S.-born or foreign-born (Leighley and Nagler 2016). Research into Latin American political involvement and voter turnout offers a complex view of the factors shaping that involvement.

This complexity contrasts with the simpler depiction offered by Verba and colleagues (1995), who argue that individuals participate in politics because they can, desire to, or are asked to. Time, money, ability, and other individual resources are certainly vital for understanding political involvement in modern democratic politics (Leighley and Nagler 2014). However, conventional demographic theories like Verba and colleagues' framework may not adequately apply to a population group that is distinctive in terms of migrant status, societal integration, and linguistic abilities. Migrant identity is significant for forecasting political participation, yet identity is not reducible to the resource-based contributions that typically explain involvement (Leighley and Nagler 2016; Valdez 2011).

Analysis of Latin American voter turnout over the past several decades has evolved from simple comparisons of whether Latinos vote more or less than White Americans, toward the more nuanced question of which factors unique to the Latin American community — or to specific elections — shape their turnout (Bueker 2013; Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980). These newer research efforts have, however, not fully explained how standard demographic factors affect Latinos' decision to participate. Meanwhile, Latino political mobilization around immigration-related issues has drawn attention toward political activity beyond the ballot box (Potochnick and Stegmaier 2020). These works underscore the importance of community institutions and salient political issues in mobilizing Latinos toward forms of involvement that do not require voter registration or citizenship status.

Latin American political involvement is lower compared to that of Black Americans and non-Hispanic White Americans. The size of this gap varies by type of involvement, though the pattern is consistent. Differences in population composition between non-Latino and Latino groups account for much of this gap. The remainder stems from institutional measures and a history of prior exclusion, though these elements are difficult to measure precisely given insufficient turnout and survey data (Hero and Campbell 1996). Most literature on Latino politics focuses on electoral politics (De la Garza 2004); however, below-average involvement also covers activities in which non-citizen Latinos can participate. Though reliable comparative data on other immigrant groups are limited, available evidence suggests that immigrant Latin Americans do not simply substitute political activity in their home countries for political involvement in the United States.

Latino Civic Engagement

Overall, Latin Americans most commonly participate in the following civic activities: voting, charitable giving, school-based activities, and organizational involvement. The proportion of non-Hispanic White Americans eligible to vote declined across all American states from 2000 to 2018; ten states saw double-digit decreases in the White eligible voter share. Over this same period, Hispanic eligible voters accounted for increasingly larger proportions of the voting public in every state. These increases are particularly significant in Texas, California, Nevada, and other southwestern states, which have witnessed a swift rise in the Hispanic share of eligible voters (Igielnik and Budiman 2020).

According to survey results, between thirty and forty percent of Latino school children's parents regularly participate in school activities (De la Garza 2004). Roughly four out of ten Latin Americans reportedly made charitable contributions in the previous year. Excluding church membership, approximately 33 percent of Latin Americans hold memberships in community-based organizations (DeSipio 2006). While churches see higher involvement rates — around 70 percent — it remains unclear whether church activities constitute civic engagement in the conventional sense.

These engagement levels differ somewhat from one Latin American national-origin community to the next; however, such differences largely disappear once socioeconomic differences are taken into account. Generally, Latin American participation in common civic activities is lower than that of Black American and non-Hispanic White American groups (Verba et al. 1995). The one exception is school-based activity: Latino and non-Latino parental involvement rates are comparable. However, in areas such as advocacy, demonstrations, political campaign involvement, and policy influence, fewer Latinos participate — only about one in ten Latin Americans report involvement in such activities. These broader patterns resemble those found in other racial and ethnic communities (DeSipio 2006), and not many consistent variations emerge across Latino national-origin communities in these less common civic activities.

Pew Research Center estimates indicate that 27.3 million Latin Americans hold voting eligibility, constituting twelve percent of the overall eligible voter pool. In the 2016 presidential election, Millennials constituted 44 percent of eligible Latino voters — an eighty percent increase from the previous election (Lopez et al. 2016). Rates of Latin American registration and voter turnout are roughly 18 and 10 percentage points lower, respectively, than those of non-Hispanic White Americans and non-Hispanic Black Americans. Over the period for which reliable data exist, Latinos have consistently shown lower voting rates than White and Black Americans. Although some gaps have narrowed, there has been no sustained rise in Latino turnout despite significant increases in candidates' outreach to eligible Latino voters over the past two decades.

Latin American participation in American political and civic life has been thoroughly assessed, and fairly consistent patterns have emerged. Latino participation resembles that of other groups, though at lower rates. Latin Americans demonstrate considerable political efficacy — that is, a sense of potential individual influence over government — and they mostly trust civic and governmental institutions. Lower engagement levels should therefore not be mistaken for dissatisfaction with American politics. Rather, as the following section explains, the gap between Latino and non-Latino involvement springs from institutional arrangements that produce compositional differences and differential mobilization between these groups.

Conclusion

Together, these findings return us to the central question posed at the outset: Does pluralism function as the ideal model for Latino political analysis? Two decades ago, the answer would have been no. Today, drawing on the insights from existing scholarship and the present discussion, the answer is a qualified yes. This does not mean that anti-Hispanic discrimination has been eliminated. Rather, a long and difficult struggle has brought Latin Americans into the American mainstream and given them the capacity to influence the political system — from both within and without.

The most pressing unresolved issues concern migrant incorporation. Should the state fail to offer immigrants meaningful access to mainstream political life, Latin Americans may find themselves facing a struggle similar to the one they confronted before the 1980s. Far from being pluralistic, such a situation would more accurately be described as a volatile, racially structured institution dominated by an Anglo elite. Given the country's history of racial and ethnic struggles — and the optimism inherent in the American experiment — one would hope the United States does not regress to such a condition. Yet that outcome is not guaranteed, and the future of Latino politics remains, as this paper has argued throughout, genuinely under construction.

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