Aside from passionate political discussions, populist promises and negative campaigns that flirt with libel, presidential elections also have the peculiarity of rediscovering forgotten groups of voters every four years.

Since the number of Hispanics in the U.S. began to rapidly increase in the 1980s, candidates to any elected government position and the news media started to speculate about the importance of the Latino vote and paid more attention to that electorate.

The myth that the Latino vote is decisive in presidential elections was born.

‘(The Latino vote) is completely irrelevant,’ said Rodolfo de la Garza, political science professor at Columbia University.

‘The myth was created by Latino leaders who wanted to convince politicians nationally about how important Latinos were, believing that would make them and Latinos more important,’ he added. ‘It was well-intentioned. It was also self-aggrandizing.’

Although the Hispanic population has increased from approximately 14 million in 1980 to more than 45 million in 2008, and has gained more political representation at the local and state levels, the Latino vote is still far from being decisive at the national level.

For de la Garza, who also serves as vice president at the Tom’aacute;s Rivera Policy Institute, a non-profit research organization, a low voter turnout and the concentration of Latinos in states that are not competitive, such as California, Illinois, New York or Texas, cause the Latino vote to be less crucial than expected. While 58 percent of the nation’s Latinos live in those four states, the Hispanic voter turnout stayed at 47 percent in 2000 and 2004, according to the Census Bureau.

Louis DeSipio, political science professor at the University of California, Irvine, also considers that the Latino electorate’s decisiveness has been mythified. For him, the Latino vote is irrelevant because it does not determine victory in any major state or in the Electoral College.

‘The nature of the Electoral College diminishes the importance of the Latino vote, because the states where Latinos are most concentrated ‘- Florida, Texas, California, Illinois, New York ‘- are generally not that important in electing the president,’ DeSipio said.

Both de la Garza and DeSipio remember they began to see stories in the 1980s about how crucial the Latino vote would be. They think that the process of mythification was produced and reinforced by different sectors: the news media, the two dominant political parties and some Latino leaders.

‘It reflects ignorance on the part of the media, because it lets them make a story where there isn’t one,’ said DeSipio, who also is the chair of the department of Chicano/Latino Studies at UCI.’ ‘It’s reinforced by campaigns that very tactically want to tell the story about doing well with Latinos here and there.’

Carlos Hern’aacute;ndez, 21, is a CSUN student who on Nov. 4 will vote in his first presidential election. As the senator from the College of Humanities in the Associated Students, he is part of a voter registration project and is focusing on registering Latinos.

‘(The Latino vote) is important here, but not on the national level,’ said Hern’aacute;ndez, a junior Central American studies major.

Although Hern’aacute;ndez remembers hearing that the Latino vote would be decisive in each presidential election, he never believed it. That, however, motivates him to continue registering more people.

‘Everything I do I think about Gandhi and his quote ‘Be the change you want to see in the world,” said Hern’aacute;ndez. ‘I probably can’t change the whole world, but I can change my little world. I believe in the domino effect and that you could make a big transformation, from the Latino vote not being important, to being determinant.’

Some academics, however, don’t think it’s a myth to say the Latino vote is decisive in presidential elections. Matt Barreto, political science professor at the University of Washington, acknowledges that the Latino electorate in states such as California, Texas or New York will not be decisive because the political inclination is already defined there, but points out that the white or black vote will also be irrelevant in the majority of states.

Aside from considering usual that only a small percentage of voters are decisive in presidential elections, because the majority of states know their results in advance, Barreto indicates that having a numerous population in four of 10 battleground states exemplifies how crucial the Latino vote is.

According to the National Association of Latino and Appointed Elected Officials turnout projections, approximately nine million Latinos will vote in this year’s election, a record number for that population.

The Latino electorate could be decisive in at least four battleground states: Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Nevada, which translate to 46 electoral votes in total. While the Democrats lead the Republicans by ample margins in three of the four states ‘-’ 63 to 15 percent in Colorado, 61 to 20 percent in New Mexico and 55 to 14 in Nevada ‘- the Latino vote in Florida seems to be evenly split, according to NALEO.

‘The states that do matter ‘- Florida, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada ‘- these four states are almost on every list of battleground states ‘hellip; and they all have a very significant Latino population,’ said Barreto, who added that the Latino vote is crucial because it will probably give the Southwest, except Arizona and Utah, to the Democrats.

‘In that context, it’s accurate to say that the Latino vote will be influential and decisive,’ he added. ‘But I also agree at the same time that there are many Latino voters in New York, California and Texas that will not be decisive, so it’s important to say that not all Latino voters, only a small number, will be influential this year.’

In addition to the concentration in major states where the election is already defined, other factors also prevent Latino political importance and participation from increasing. Various experts indicate that a combination of low registration and voter turnout have limited the Hispanic vote influence.

Barreto and DeSipio consider that registration campaigns garnered toward Latinos, such as the ‘Ya es hora’ (Spanish for ‘It is time’), by NALEO and Univision. Barreto, however, thinks that although these efforts are a good start, more aggressive registration campaigns by the state and political parties are necessary, because it should not solely be the responsibility of Latino advocacy organizations.

‘What’s disappointing is the level of registration,’ Barreto said. ‘We have as many as 17 million eligible Latinos to vote, and out of those only 10 million are registered to vote. It’s the lowest rate of any racial group in the U.S.’

‘(Latino turnout) is not disappointing because it increases about 20 percent every four years,’ DeSipio said. ‘The other way of seeing that, however, is that Latino turnout just keeps up with the growth in the citizen adult population, so Latinos continue underrepresented as a share of voters.’

While the Latino population’s increase has been significant in recent decades, its growing numbers are just starting to translate into a greater influence on the national level. Considerable progress has been made since the days when Hispanics could not vote, own property or speak Spanish in schools, but there is still much more work to do before their political participation reaches its maturity.

Latinos are not sufficiently involved politically because the majority of them are young, less educated and have a smaller income, said de la Garza. He believes, however, that there is another way of thinking about importance, not in actual numbers, but in setting the context of the elections.

‘Latinos have changed the tone of American elections,’ de la Garza said. ‘Latinos have created a more sophisticated electorate, because they’re perceived to be culturally and p
olitically distinct, even if they’re not. So it’s deliberate and desirable for candidates to speak another language, for a candidate to be cognizant of another language.’

‘We change the context of the election, but not necessarily influence the outcome of the election,’ he concluded.