Latino Vote Up in Florida and Nevada

Latino voting is up sharply in Florida and Nevada, likely giving a boost to Hillary Clinton.

Early voting by Latinos surged in several states — Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada — but the data doesn’t show if those voters were new or just voting early to avoid an the election-day rush.

But the election data in Florida shows that many of the additional Latino voters did not vote in 2012. Dan Smith, a professor and ballot expert at the University of Florida, told Bloomberg:

“Of the 707,844 voters in Miami-Dade, 201,000 did not vote in 2012—and 127,000 of them are Hispanic,” he says. “Hispanic voters are over-performing their share of the electorate.”

Among the 117,000 African Americans who voted early, 22,500 didn’t vote in 2012. “Basically, one in five blacks and one in three Hispanics didn’t vote in 2012 in Miami-Dade and have already cast a ballot,” said Smith.

State-wide, according to Smith, 1.4 million of the 6.34 million Florida voters who cast their ballots before election day did not vote in the 2012 election.

Of that 1.4 million, 10 percent are African-American, 17 percent are Hispanic, and 67 percent are white, and 5 percent are other, including many Asians.

Roughly speaking, five out of eight whites lead towards the GOP, while three out of seven Latinos in Florida lean GOP.