Data released last week from the U.S. Census about the 2016 election said that the national voter turnout rate for Latinos did not surpass the 2012 rate.
The following chart from the Census’ “Voting in America: A Look at the 2016 Presidential Election” report showed that the voting rate for Latinos in 2016 was 47.6% and 48% in 2012. In 2008, the voting rate for Latinos was 49.9%.
Despite the decrease, the voter share for Latinos increased to 9.2% in 2016, compared to 8.4% in 2012. In other words, of the 137.5 million people who voted in the 2016 election, about 12.65 million Latinos went to the polls in 2016. In 2012, 11.2 million Latinos voted in 2012. According to Pew Research, the total number of Latinos who voted in 2016 was still a record number.
Pew also explored at some of the 2016 Census data and reported additional findings about the Latino vote. The Pew findings acknowledged that even though it was expected that Latinos would vote in record numbers during the 2016 election, “the number of Latino nonvoters —those eligible to vote who do not cast a ballot, or 14 million in 2016— was larger than the number of Latino voters, a trend that extends back to each presidential election since 1996.”
The Pew findings added said that “Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other racial or ethnic minorities accounted for 26.7% of voters in 2016, a share unchanged from 2012.” It also noted that “whites made up 73.3% of voters in 2016, a share unchanged from 2012, when they accounted for 73.7%.”
When it came to voting and naturalized citizens, Pew stated this: “In 2016, turnout among Asian naturalized citizens was 51.9%, compared with 44.9% for U.S.-born Asians. Among Hispanics, naturalized-citizen turnout was 53.4%, higher than the 45.5% turnout for U.S.-born Hispanics.”
The Census also explored turnout rates by age and noted that “for other race non-Hispanics and Hispanics of any race, voting rates between 2012 and 2016 were not statistically different for any age groups.”
Furthermore, it reported that “a large portion of the additional reported voters (2.8 million) were non-Hispanic whites who were also 65 years of age and older.”
