Data
We use data from a national post-election survey of Latino registered voters by the
Tomás Rivera Policy Institute conducted in February 2001 following the 2000 Presidential
election (see de la Garza and Abrajano 2002 for more on the dataset). Using a listed sample of
registered voters, a total of 2,131 Latinos were interviewed in five states: California, Texas,
Florida, Illinois, and New York. To account for the presence of Latino elected officials (our key
independent variable), we matched each of the respondents with their Congressional district and
two state legislative districts. In addition, we merged in Census data at the zipcode level to
provide contextual factors such as group size.
Contacting of Latinos
We are interested in get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts expended upon the Latino
community in the United States. In our final data, we have 2,131 respondents. It is important to
understand that just as there are multiple levels of representation, there are also multiple levels of
possible GOTV efforts exerted by candidates, parties, and interest groups. Overall, 31.4% of
respondents in the TRPI survey reported being asked to vote by any person or organization.
22.4% of all respondents (or 71.2% of those contacted) reported being contacted by a political
candidate or a representative a political party. Only 8.7% of respondents (or 27.6% of those
contacted) reported being contacted by someone other than a candidate or a representative of a
party, such as a union, a church, or community organization.
There was a slight overlap of contact between partisan organizations and interest groups.
3.7% (or 11.8% of those contacted) reported being contacted by both partisan organizations and
interest groups. We can, conversely, look at individuals reporting only unique contact from
either partisan organizations or interest groups. 18.4% of all respondents (or 58.5% of those
contacted) reported being contacted only by a political candidate or a partisan organization. In
other words, 82.2% of respondents who reported being contacted by a candidate or partisan
organization were only contacted by those individuals/organizations and not contacted by any
interest group. 4.9% of respondents (15.5% of respondents) reported being contacted only by an
interest group. That is, 27.6% of respondents who were contacted by an interest group were only
contacted by an interest group and not by any political organization or candidate. Given this, we
note that it is political candidates and parties who are expending most of the resources in GOTV
efforts among Latinos. But how different were these efforts between the political parties?
Barreto, Espino, Pantoja and RamÃrez / APSA 2003 / 8
Convention