UnidosUS Releases Final Brief and Poll on Latino Voters Ahead of Election Day
WASHINGTON, DC—UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza) released today “Latino Voters and the 2020 Election: The Path to the Voting Booth,” the third installment of its series on the Latino electorate. The series covers the makeup, participation trends and influence of Latino voters, their priority issues and perspectives about parties and candidates and what they would like to see in a president. This final brief offers a closer look at vote-by-mail trends among Latino voters, and our latest poll released this week in collaboration with Univision and SOMOS, looks at the number of Latinos who already have voted and their issue and candidate preferences as this election season nears the finish line.
Key findings in the report include:
- Since 2012, Latinos have had the most rapid and consistent rate of growth in adoption of alternative voting methods. In vote-by-mail and early voting, Latinos are outpacing other demographics, from midterm to midterm and presidential to presidential election cycles.
- Based on their experience at the polls, Latino voters are concerned about voter disenfranchisement. Even before the pandemic, 60 percent had serious concerns about eligible voters being denied the right to vote, compared with 27 percent of Whites. Those concerns also extend to voting by mail.
- For Latino voters, COVID-19 poses new barriers to voting while worsening long-standing ones. Latinos are overrepresented among both confirmed COVID-19 cases and the essential workforce. Risk of exposure and inability to take time off work to vote are significant factors many Latinos are weighing as they make their plan to vote.
Latinos are expected to be the second-largest voting group this election and to play a decisive role in the presidential race and in many competitive races across the country.
“According to our latest poll, already 50 percent of Latino voters report having voted,” said Clarissa Martinez-de-Castro, Deputy Vice President of Policy and Advocacy at UnidosUS. “While our community has traditionally voted in-person, a growing number is voting by mail. Expanding access and availability of safe voting options is of critical importance, as the pandemic has put into even higher relief. More voting options help empower voters—at the moment, to manage exposure to COVID-19, and generally, to overcome barriers they have faced at the polls. If we make the pathway to the ballot box more accessible, Latinos participation will grow even more.”
You can read the third installment of the report here.