With approximately 60 million Latinos in the United States, it would be a mistake for any political party to ignore the Latino vote in a presidential-election year like this one. Political theorist Cristina Beltrán, who studies Latino political identity in the U.S., says it’s also a mistake to think of Latinos as a homogeneous voting bloc. She warns that any sentence beginning with “The Latino community thinks . . .” is likely to be wrong.
Culturally and politically, U.S. Latinos are diverse and forever evolving. Although the majority of Latinos lean Democratic, Mexican Americans in Texas, Cuban Americans in Florida, and Puerto Ricans in New York often hold different political beliefs. And while a narrow majority of Latinos in the U.S. are Catholic, large numbers are evangelical; some, like Beltrán, are Jewish; and an increasing number have no religion.
