How Latinos Will Vote

SAN DIEGO -- Now that Latinos have begun to have their say in the primaries, here are 15 things that Americans ought to keep in mind about this important constituency.

-- Ten states have big Latino populations. Having voted in Nevada, Colorado, and Texas, Latinos go to the polls in Florida and Illinois on March 15, Arizona on March 22, New York on April 19, and California, New Mexico and New Jersey on June 7.

-- Three of those states are usually too close to call and often decide presidential elections: Colorado, Nevada and Florida. It's not a stretch to say that Latinos pick presidents.

-- The majority of Latino voters (about 60 percent) are registered Democrats, and a much smaller subset (less than 20 percent) are registered Republicans. The rest mostly describe themselves as independent.

-- Yet, when it comes to ideology, most Latinos aren't liberal. A 2013 survey by Latino Opinions found that Latinos are divided pretty evenly, with 32 percent identifying as conservative, 31 percent as liberal, and 30 percent as moderate.

-- And, while neither overly partisan nor blindly ideological, Latinos have repeatedly shown a tendency to vote for the person not the party, and support moderate Republicans who can survive their party's nominating process.

-- Immigration is not the top issue for Latinos ... until it is. When the nativist winds aren't blowing, Latinos care about education, jobs and the economy, and health care. But when immigration is flaring up, the issue becomes more important to Latinos.

-- The GOP's thickheaded approach to immigration, where the party too often panders to racists and wrongly blames immigrants for a broken immigration system, keeps at arm's length many Latinos who might otherwise vote for Republican candidates.

-- The Democrats' cynical approach to immigration, where the party caters to organized labor by carrying out deportations and then lazily exploits Republican blunders to win Latino votes, ensures that the community's support for Democrats is a mile wide but an inch deep.

-- While often compared to African-Americans, Latino voters are more like other Catholic immigrant communities such as the Irish and Italians. Fiercely patriotic and integrated into the mainstream, they are full-fledged Americans but also ethnically distinct.

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