whether as citizens or as immigrants (whether they are legal or illegal) influence the
electoral system through the reapportionment process which in turn allows groups to
potentially exert political influence even if they are not citizens. Additionally, with
naturalization Latin American immigrants become citizens and are eligible to vote, thus
potentially expanding the Hispanic electorate. This growth is why analysts have been
paying so much attention to the Latino vote especially in states where the Hispanic
population is highly concentrated.
Furthermore, as Latinos become a large percent of the total electorate, their probability
of determining the outcome of an election increases. For instance, in the 1990s Latinos
constituted 9 percent of the total population and less than 5 percent of the electorate.
Today, Latinos represent about 14 percent of the total population and almost 11 percent
of all voting-age citizens. More significant is the growth in high concentration states
where the probabilities that the Latino electorate could influence the outcome of a
presidential election have increased beyond the implications of overall population
increases.
In this paper, we test how likely the Latino vote is to swing from the Democrats to the
Republicans by analyzing who among the Latino electorate have changed parties, who
and why they have moved closer toward Republicans rather than moving closer to the
Democrats and what are their associated probabilities of supporting Republican
candidates. Our conclusion is that although Latinos can change their partisan allegiances
in a given election and over time, the Hispanic electorate is far from becoming a swing
vote in favor of the Republican Party at the national level. While Latino support for
Republicans has oscillated since 1980 when Ronald Regan won the Presidential Election
(see Garcia & de la Garza, 1977; de la Garza, et. al, 1992; DeSipio 1996, DeSipio, de la
Garza & Setzler 1999) rather than reflecting higher support for Republican candidates,
variations in rates of support may reflect low turnout in heavily Democratic areas
(Gimpel 2003) rather than an indicator of explicit partisan realignment.
The paper is organized as follows. In Part I we briefly discuss Latino partisanship and
the data used in this paper. Part II discusses Latino partisan-affiliation changes and their
Convention