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Despite Growing Populations of Blacks, Latinos & Asians, the Electorate is Very White on Election Day

For Hispanics in particular, their growing population does not translate directly into voters. Because they are younger than the general population, one third of Hispanics are below voting age, and more than a quarter are not citizens. For every 100 Hispanics in the population, only 40 are eligible to vote, 23 are likely to register, and just 18 will show up at the ballot box. The voter-to-population translation is almost as low for Asians, where only 21 out of 100 people will likely vote. For blacks the number is 37, and for whites, almost half. As a consequence, the racial profile of the voting population looks far less like a rainbow than the total population's. Minorities now comprise about one third of the total U.S. population, but among people casting votes next week, it is expected that four out of five will be white. And 60 percent of these white voters will be older than 45. Older whites also are better positioned geographically than minorities to have an impact on the outcome next week. Most of the nation's Hispanic population resides in large safely "blue" states such as California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois, or in the safe "red" state of Texas. Although there is significant spill-out to battlegrounds, more than three-quarters of the nation's Hispanics live outside of the 18 battleground states. More than 80 percent of Asian-Americans do not reside there. And for blacks, their recent migration out of the North to mostly "red" Southern states has had the effect of diminishing their impact on battleground states they have left, such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. [more]