Buzzfeed News:
By Adrian Carrasquillo
February 2, 2016
After
dismal Latino turnout numbers in Iowa the past two presidential
caucuses, early indications suggest that a $300,000 nonpartisan effort
to get Hispanics to caucus
succeeded in getting record turnout.
The
initiative by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
aimed to get 10,000 out of 50,000 registered Latino voters to caucus
sites by repeatedly contacting
them through phone calls and door knocks. NBC News exit poll shows that
4% of Democratic caucus-goers were Hispanic and 2% were on the
Republican side. With both sides seeing huge turnout (171,000 for the
Democrats and more than 180,000 for the GOP) that comes
out to close to 10,500 Latinos.
Only
1,000 Latinos caucused in 2012. In 2008, when the race was competitive
for both Democrats and Republicans, that number was 3,500.
LULAC,
drawing from responses campaign field staff received from phone calls,
door-knocking, and “Commit to Caucus” returns from mailers, believes the
number is closer
to 13,000.
“We
did our part, Latinos played our part,” said LULAC Iowa political
director Christian Ucles. “We knew when LULAC put together this program
in Iowa, that they were ready
to come out with a show of force for any candidate that supports the
Latino community.”
While
the effort was billed as nonpartisan, it was ostensibly also an
anti-Donald Trump effort. The bombastic billionaire underperformed,
coming in a disappointing second,
but the small Hispanic presence on the GOP side likely did not have
much effect.
Though
exit polls show Hillary Clinton winning 58% of the minority vote, Ucles
said he is going to further analyze county returns, because Sen. Bernie
Sanders won 15 of
the largest 20 counties where Latinos live, suggesting they may have
played a role in the razor-thin Clinton victory, which because of
delegate allocation, Sanders billed as a virtual tie.
Other
campaigns hoped to take advantage of this effort too. Jeb Bush’s
campaign and Martin O’Malley were speaking to Hispanics on the ground
but it did not pay off enough.
Bush came in sixth, with 2.8% support and O’Malley suspended his
campaign once the results became clear.
Many
believe the rise of Trump, who has insulted Mexicans and immigrants,
and pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, could lead to
high Hispanic voter
turnout during the rest of 2016.
While
the numbers in Iowa are still small, Ucles said a polarizing figure
like Trump, as well as Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio who finished a
strong third, could energize
Hispanics in different ways, with the first caucus serving as an early
harbinger of things to come.
“Democrats
are going to have to do an aggressive outreach to the Latino
community,” he said, pointing to states with much larger Hispanic
populations. “Just imagine what
it could do for other states like Georgia and North Carolina.
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