FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 25, 2000 |
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Latino Vote in Texas to Set New Record for
Participation in November
WCVI Projects Tejanos Will Cast Over A Million Votes This Election
San Antonio, TX- "According to our analysis, Texas Latino registration was 1,899,717 or approximately 20.2% of all registered voters in Texas, as of August, 2000," said WCVI President, Antonio Gonzalez. The number of Tejanos who have registered to vote since 1996 has increased by 19.4%, that is a total of 368,717 new Latino registered voters since the last presidential elections. We project 1.95 million Latinos were registered as of October 10th cut off date. Latinos will cast between 1.07 and 1.17 million votes in November, a 55%-60% turnout rate. This rate will be lower than our national projection of 75% turnout of registered Latino voters. Factors for a modest turnout in Texas are a lack of competitive presidential and congressional races.
"Judging by the recent polls conducted by WCVI, the Latino community has reached an unprecedented 7.6 million registered voters for this year's national elections," said González. "We estimate that U.S. Latino registration is between 7.2 million and 7.7 million. As we collect more data from other states we'll be able to make a more precise estimate. This will occur by the end of the week," said Robert Aguinaga, WCVI Research Coordinator.
"In terms of Presidential preferences, Latinos are supportive of Vice President Al Gore by a three to one ratio. According to WCVI polls in several key states, Latinos overwhelmingly favor Al Gore perhaps because Bush has not supported those issues most important to Latinos, immigration reform, strengthening jobs and wages, access to health care, and educational reform," commented González.
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