1 in 4, compared to 1 in 7

The Florida presidential primary elections will take place Tuesday, and will give us the first election where the Latino population is significant – and not merely fast-growing (such as Iowa or South Carolina).

Just how significant are we talking?

THE PEW HISPANIC Center released its own overview of the Florida electorate, showing just how many Latinos potentially could show up at the polling places next week.

And for those people who think the Florida Latino vote is the Miami exile community, that’s only part of the story.

For the record, 13.1 percent of the state’s registered voters are Latino (about 1 of every 7), compared to 23 percent of the state’s overall population being Latino (about 1 in 4). Insofar as ethnicity, 32 percent of the Florida Latinos eligible to vote are Cubano, while 28 percent are Puerto Rican and 9 percent are Mexican-American (compared to 59 percent of Latino eligible voters nationally).

Now I know the ideologue argument – those are small and should be ignored. Which would be true if the rest of the Florida populace were united in opposition.

FORTUNATELY FOR MY ethnic brethren, the idea of those people agreeing on anything is ludicrous. Which makes our number sizable enough to break any sort of tie. It is why any candidate who has engaged in hostile campaigning activity to date potentially is going to pay for it now.

The statistic that amazed me the most is the fact that 452,619 Latinos are registered to vote in Florida as Republicans, compared to 564,513 Latinos registered as Democrats.

The past six years have seen the shift away from the Republican Party for Latinos in Florida. Those exiles are dying off, and their hostility toward the “Party of Kennedy” is not being passed down to the future generations.

If anything, it may well be the hostility toward GOPers that is developing in recent years, and could become a long-running trend (the number of Latino Democrats in Florida registered to vote has increased by nearly 200,000 people since 2006 – while Latino Republicans has increased by only about 38,000 since then).

SO IT WILL be interesting to see how the turnout comes down next week.

For the chance is good that the majority Democrats of Florida Latinos will not be turning out in force because of Barack Obama running un-opposed. What about the Latino Republicans?

Will they feel compelled to turn out in any significant numbers? What if a large number decided to sit it out for the GOP primary? Which is what the Republican operatives are ultimately hoping happens in the general election – as they want Latinos to “sit it out” and vote for nobody, rather than Obama.

There is one potentially depressing factor – Florida has about 2.1 million Latinos who are eligible to vote. But as indicated earlier, the number of people who are actually registered is about 1.1 million.

THAT MAKES 1 million Latinos who are fully capable of registering to cast ballots on Election Day, but who won’t.

I realize that Election Day apathy exists among all ethnic groups. Perhaps Latino apathy in Florida isn’t any worse than any other place.

But it still is dismaying to see 1 million Latinos decide it’s not worth bothering to express their voice with a vote – which is one of the perks of living in this society.

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