2012 Presidential Election, Latino Voters | featured news

The 2012 elections drove home trends that have been embedded in the fine print of birth and death rates, immigration statistics and census charts for years. America is rapidly getting more diverse, and, more gradually, so is its electorate. Nonwhites made up 28 percent of the electorate this year, compared with 20 percent in 2000. Much of that growth is coming from Hispanics.

Tuesday's decisive win by Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential election highlighted how population shifts - ethnic and generational - have buoyed Democrats while forcing Republicans to rethink their message.

The outsized role that Latino voters played in securing victories for President Obama and Democratic Senate candidates has energized the effort to rewrite America's immigration laws, but opposition in Congress, particularly among House Republicans, remains a significant hurdle.

President Obama says he's confident he can get an immigration bill -- because Republicans need Hispanic votes.

Some African American, Spanish-speaking and elderly voters in Florida and Virginia are apparently being targeted by anonymous voter-suppression groups trying to trick them or intimidate them into not voting in the November presidential election, according to election officials and voter protection organizations.

President Obama is poised to make a bit of history when he visits this Tehachapi Mountain hamlet Monday to dedicate the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument, the nation's first such site to honor a contemporary Mexican American.

A civil rights group says photo ID laws and proof of citizenship rules could deter Latinos from voting.

The latest tracking poll by Latino Decisions — which includes data reflecting the full impact of the party conventions — finds that Obama picked up three points, rising to 68 percent support compared with Romney’s 26 percent.

Hours after Mitt Romney’s campaign promised that the GOP nominee would begin to offer new policy prescriptives, Romney stumped in Los Angeles on Monday at a gathering of Latino business leaders, promising to cut federal spending, help small businesses and reform a “broken” immigration system. But he offered no new details on how he would accomplish these goals.

Mitt Romney plans to make an appeal to Hispanic voters Monday in a speech where he is expected to distinguish himself as the better presidential candidate on economy and immigration, a topic that has brought his campaign considerable controversy.