Latinos in Nevada have more voting rights than ever before. What this means for 2024

Jose Solorio says that in the more than 40 years he has lived in Nevada, his political campaigns have never truly succeeded in reaching the state's Latino community.

The 65-year-old lobbyist and civil rights activist is not the first to emphasize the well-known political wisdom that the Latino community is not a monolith and that its voting behavior varies greatly depending on immigration experience, age and Spanish proficiency. Yet after all these years and close elections, he says, political parties are still grappling with that dynamic.

“That’s the problem: people want the Latino vote, but they don’t know how to get it,” Solorio said The Nevada Independent at a Hispanics in Politics event this month. “We're different. We're not just saying, 'Do this and you'll get all the votes.' You have to reach us in a different way.”

Despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric and his promise to campaign against mass deportations, former President Donald Trump has remained stable with Latino voters this election cycle. Vice President Kamala Harris is facing attacks over the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border but has continued to solidify support among Latinos after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

It is clear that Democrats and Republicans can only win in November if they reach these voters, who make up about one in five of the state's registered voters.

But what political influence do Latinos actually have in Nevada and has it always been this way?

To answer these questions, The Nevada Independent analyzed how population trends among voting-age Latinos in Nevada and the bloc's voting behavior have changed since 2008.

The data shows that in Nevada—and particularly in the Las Vegas Valley—the Latino voting-age population growth has increased more than the overall population growth. At the same time, a well-known census figure indicates that Latinos are less likely to register and vote than black and white voters, suggesting their untapped voting potential.

The analysis also highlights a political environment in which the power of Latino voters in Nevada is growing, a fact that could be the deciding factor in Nevada's usually close statewide elections (the 2022 Senate race was decided by about 8,000 votes, the narrowest margin in the country). And with Nevada's six electoral votes potentially influencing the outcome of the presidential election, political scientists say Nevada's Latino votes could potentially play a significant role in determining the next president.

Since the beginning of this month, Democratic groups and candidates in Nevada have aired over $17 million worth of Spanish-language ads during the presidential and Senate elections this cycle, while Republicans have spent about $2.5 million on the Senate race and $100,000 on the presidential election, according to the ad tracking company Advertising effectiveness.

But wooing Latino voters will require more than television ads, says David Damore, a political scientist at UNLV and co-author of a book on Nevada's Latino population.

“We're talking about months of door-to-door campaigning to engage voters, potential voters, and build their trust,” Damore said. “It's very time-consuming, but that's what Democrats started doing two decades ago, and it's really paid off in the last decade as Nevada went from being more Republican to more Democratic.”

Population growth

Fernando Romero remembers being one of eight Latino students in his graduating class at UNLV, which included nearly 450 students.

As a student over 50 years ago, Romero says, Latinos faced widespread discrimination that he described as “even worse” than his childhood in Texas. During his early years in Nevada, he was verbally abused and felt isolated from those around him. It was a change for Romero, who is originally from El Paso, a Texas border city that has long had a majority Latino population.

Romero, the longtime director of Hispanics in Politics, said he didn't really see Nevada's Latino community blossom until the late 1980s, when casino magnate Steve Wynn began developing the Mirage and several other hotels. The growing industry attracted many Latino families looking for work, but since there was no Latino community, politically interested people like him had to fight hard to get their presence known, he says — and that wasn't always successful.

“We have grown considerably,” said Romero. “But politically we have not made the same leaps.”

The data proves him right.

The number of Latino voters in Nevada has increased considerably in recent years, outpacing the national growth rate of Latinos, according to a Nevada Independent Analysis of census data.

This is particularly pronounced in Clark County, the state's most populous county. In 2022, more than 23 percent of the county's eligible voters were Latino, up from about 14 percent in 2009.

Take the maps below as examples. In 2010, Latino-dominated census tracts—small geographic areas used for data collection—were concentrated primarily in East Las Vegas, and only six of the roughly 650 tracts in the Las Vegas Valley were majority Latino.

Things are different in 2022. There are more than six times as many Hispanic-majority census tracts compared to 2010, and the 2022 map has a slightly redder hue, indicating the growth of the Hispanic population throughout the Valley.

According to Lisa Sanchez, a political scientist at the University of Arizona, two factors are primarily responsible for this trend: migration patterns within the United States and young people growing up to voting age.

“There's this old statistic that says every 30 seconds a Latino voter becomes eligible to vote because they turn 18. That's absolutely true,” Sanchez said. “Latinos have a slightly higher birth rate, so the population is younger, and they're having more children, and those children are becoming voters.”

While the state's Latino population has grown, their representation in elected office has lagged (despite bright spots like the election of the country's first Latina senator, Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV)).

In 2021, Latino groups pushed for a majority Latino seat in Congress during redistricting, but the redistricting ultimately distributed the Latino population across the state's four districts, weakening the voting bloc's power.

During the Hispanics in Politics event, Norma Salgado, a 60-year-old government employee, said The Nevada Independent that it is encouraged by this population growth.

As a young girl, her Mexican father encouraged Salgado to be proud of her heritage and to become politically active. Still, she felt isolated, Salgado said. Sometimes she saw only one other Hispanic student in her class.

Today, she is proud to see so many Hispanic children graduating from high school and college.

“It is up to us to support other Hispanics,” Salgado said.

Voting behavior

How does all this affect the ballot box?

According to a prominent census taken after every federal election, fewer Latinos have voted and registered to vote in Nevada in every presidential election since 2008 than black and white voters.

Since 2008, about 70 percent of eligible Latino voters in Nevada have registered to vote, and half said they voted in the presidential election, according to the Census' Current Population Survey, which surveys thousands of Nevadans after the presidential election.

Meanwhile, about 80 percent of white Nevadans reported registering to vote and 65 percent cast their ballots during that time period, while two-thirds of black Nevadans reported registering to vote, while 83 percent reported registering to vote. Asian voters often reported voting at similar rates to Latinos.

Sanchez of the University of Arizona said these data followed historical trends.

“Latinos are punching below their weight class,” Sanchez said. “They tend not to vote as frequently as other groups, particularly whites and blacks in the United States, both nationally and historically.”

However, there is still untapped potential among Latino voters, partly because they are younger and tend to have more volatile voting behavior, says Sanchez.

An analysis by UCLA's Latino Data Hub found that the average age of eligible Latinos to vote in Nevada is 37—ten years younger than the average for all ethnic groups.

According to Sanchez, this has an impact on voting behavior: young people are more inclined to cast their vote if a presidential candidate mobilizes voters and uses social media platforms preferred by younger voters, such as TikTok.

“Before Kamala Harris came to power, the most important thing was the everyday format of campaigning, and people were not motivated,” Sanchez said. “We are definitely seeing that large numbers of Latinos have become more motivated recently.”

Not just Nevada

The Latino population has also increased significantly in other swing states.

Of the seven swing states most likely to determine the winner of this year's presidential election, Nevada ranks third in the increase in the number of Latino voters, after North Carolina and Georgia.

In addition, in four of the ten most populous counties in these swing states, the number of Latino voters more than doubled between 2009 and 2022, with Clark County in third place.

The data reflect the increasing influence of Latino voters in all swing states – even in those that are not known for having a strong Latino population.

Sanchez said these population changes have the potential to “shake up” elections. Georgia and North Carolina, for example, are historically known for having predominantly white and black populations — and that hasn't changed — but the increase in Latino populations could have huge electoral implications, especially if electoral majorities are razor-thin.

“When you talk about the swing states that decide [elections] with 8,000 votes, like in Nevada, it will be even more important,” Sanchez said.[Parties] we really focus on which of these voices we can attract to our camp.”

Click Here for more information on The Nevada Independent's analysis of this article.