The Elusive Latino Swing Voter - Found!

Last week I pondered the impact (or lack thereof) that Latino voters might have in 2010.

There's always a million ways to read an election, but it is very interesting to see that the majority of polls showed Harry Reid trailing Sharron Angle by several points going into election day, but in the end he pulled out a strong win.

Political Scientist and pollster Matthew Baretto believes the Latino vote - and the failure of pollsters to poll in Spanish - explains the miss.

Nate Silver followed up quickly with the following analysis:

As a back-of-the-envelope test of Mr. Barreto’s theory, I compiled results from the eight states with the largest share of Latinos in their population: these are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Texas. There were 15 gubernatorial and Senate races last night between these states....In 10 of the 15 races, the polling average underestimated the Democrat’s margin by at least 2.5 points.

Now the questions turn to what politicians will actually do to meet the needs of this increasingly growing constituency.

Image Source: The Fourth Branch

Online Sources: NPR, NY Times/Fivethirtyeight, The Hill, Politico