A new Texas study determines that middle-aged Latinos are less likely to vote. Researchers at Austin Community College and Texas State University dug into 2008 voter data to better understand the people who register but don’t vote.
The statistics, according to a Houston Chronicle story, showed that Hispanics remain disproportionately more unlikely to cast a ballot than other groups. Assistant Professor Blake Farrar at Austin Community College and Texas State University professorHyun Jung Yun found that Hispanics between 35-44 years old were staying away at much higher rates than other groups, an indication that they have difficulty taking time off from work. Young Hispanics, between 18-44 years old, also voted in much lower numbers than other ethnic groups.
“We wanted to show the folks that are (trying to get out the vote) a scientific study of who isn’t voting,” explained Peck Young, director of the Center for Public Policy and Political Studies, which sponsored the study. “If you just take the people who didn’t vote in 2008, but were registered, they could change the outcome of the state.”
The 2.3 million non-voters in Texas broke down as 34 percent Hispanic, 5 percent African American and 61 percent everyone else. The first surprise of the study was that neither gender nor the length of time someone has been registered influence whether someone made it to the polls.