Minority Voters to Play Big Role in Presidential Election
Minority voter participation will play an important role in picking the winner of this year’s presidential election, according to a new Census data analysis released on Wednesday by the Brookings Institution.
President Obama’s reelection is even more dependent of minority support than in 2008, according to William Frey, a senior fellow at Brookings and the author of the analysis. But whether those voters and the country’s increasingly diverse population will give Obama and the Democrats the edge they need to win is not a foregone conclusion.
Demographics do not necessarily translate directly into votes, Frey points out in the analysis. And the nation’s still-large white population can play an outsized role in politics.
Although minority populations are growing rapidly, whites are more heavily represented among eligible voters than in the general population, according to the analysis. Of every 100 Hispanic residents in the country, only 44 are eligible voters. In contrast, 78 of every 100 white residents is eligible to vote.
It also matters how many eligible minority voters and their white counterparts register and show up to vote.