Number of eligible Hispanic American voters increased by nearly 5 million since 2018, says report

The number of eligible Hispanic American voters has increased by 4.7 million since 2018, according to a recent analysis conducted by the Pew Research Center. While Democrats still outpace Republicans in terms of voter registration, a higher number of Latinos voted Republican in the 2022 midterm elections than they did in 2018, the report says.

“While Hispanic voters continued to favor Democrats over Republicans, a higher share of Hispanic voters supported GOP candidates in the 2022 election compared with in 2018. In November, 60% of Hispanic voters cast ballots for Democrats compared with 39% who supported Republicans. This 21-point margin is smaller than in 2018, when 72% of Hispanic voters favored Democrats and 25% supported Republicans,” the analysis says.

The timing of the report coincides with recent news from ADN America that Hispanic Americans have surpassed the non-Hispanic white majority in Texas, and that one million Hispanics are reaching the voter eligible age of 18 every year.

Last year, Hispanics made up 40.2% of the Texas population while non-Hispanic White Texans made up 39.4%, according to estimates from the American Community Survey (ACS) for 2021.

“One million young Hispanic Americans are expected to turn 18 every year for the next 15 years, according to an October 2022 Pew Research Center study, making Hispanic American youth a key target demographic for both parties as a million new eligible voters will be borne from the group each year for the next decade and a half,” ADN reported.

With nearly one year away from the 2024 election, Democratic and Republican campaigns in several battleground states are taking an increased interest in Hispanics, who could turn the election in a number of state and federal races, especially in southwestern states such as Arizona and Nevada.

The Latino vote will be influential around the country as the number of eligible voters has swelled over the last five years, said Clarissa Martínez, vice president of the Latino vote initiative, Unidos in a recent interview with ABC News.

“We are currently the second largest group in the United States in which nearly one of every five people in our country is Hispanic. And we look at that from different angles. Latinos are now the second largest group of voting-age Americans and are playing an increasingly important and defining role in our political landscape," Martínez told the national news network.

While the number of Hispanic eligible voters has increased by 4.7 million since 2018, a total of 34.5 million Latinos will be eligible to vote in the 2024 election, making Hispanic Americans “the fastest-growing racial and ethnic group in the U.S. electorate since the last midterm elections,” according to data from the Pew Research Center.

Hispanic Americans voted in record numbers in the 2022 midterm elections, with more than 11.8 million Latinos voting in several states including Arizona, Nevada, New Jersey and North Carolina, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

Voting patterns and registration has shown that Latinos in the Southwest are typically liberal to moderate on most social issues, and maybe conservative on some issues whereas Hispanic Americans in Florida, which includes the Cuban, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan American communities lean Republican since they come from communist states and view government control with scrutiny.