Political

A new Thomas Rivera Policy Institute report assesses the degree to which Latino electoral participation will be diminished by new roles in elective leadership and recent community mobilization.

With the partisan balance of power at stake in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, Latinos are poised to determine the outcome of key races on November 7, according to an analysis conducted by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund.

Reflecting the political maturity of Latino communities throughout our country, Latino candidates are competing in 38 states for the nation’s top federal and state offices in Election 2006, according to the 2006 Election Profile released by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund.

Will the Christian Right be out in force come the November mid-term elections? And if so, behind which political party’s banner will they now march?

They vote ­ but not always. Compared with Americans who regularly cast ballots, they are less engaged in politics. They are more likely to be bored with the political process and admit they often do not know enough about candidates to cast ballots. But they are crucial to Republican and Democratic fortunes in the Nov. 7 midterm elections.

According to an analysis released by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) of census data on the 2004 election, foreign-born voters in states with significant electoral votes such as California, Florida, and New York can make a statewide electoral vote outcome difference if as few as 3-4% of foreign-born voters shift their partisanship or candidate preferences.

Latino elected officials still must contend with significant discrimination when they run for and hold public office, according to a study released today by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund.

I spent Monday and Tuesday of this week in San Diego–not hanging on the beach as I would have liked in mid-August, but attending and speaking at “All Things Political,” a training session for more than 100 political consultants put on by Campaigns & Elections Magazine and the eVoter Institute.

PointRoll, Inc. announced the results of its collaboration with the E-Voter Institute and HCD Research in conducting the First Annual Voter Expectations Survey. More than 250,000 voters interacted with rich media ad units that ran from June through August and carried the survey to 17 small, mid-sized, large-market and national daily newspapers across the United States.

There may be 77 days remaining until Election Day, however Campaign Media Analysis Group, a TNS Media Intelligence company, reports that political and issue advocacy television advertising is on pace to shatter the mid-term election spending record set in 2002 and possibly surpass the record set in 2004. From Jan. 1 – Aug. 13, 2006, a stunning $311 million has been spent on local television so far by the candidates, the political parties, as well as interest groups campaigning within the nation’s gubernatorial, congressional, and senatorial elections – a 150 percent increase over the amount spent during the same period in 2002.

The NDN Political Fund announced the launch of a new national media campaign to bring the values and agenda of the Democratic Party to tens of millions of Americans.

The campaign, “Mas Que un Partido” (“More Than a Game/Party”), will bring these values – opportunity , responsibility, fair-play and the notion that we’re all in this together – to life through the passion and power of the world’s most popular sport: soccer.

Strict requirements, insufficient information about registration procedures and lack of public interest hobbled Mexico’s first effort to conduct absentee voting among its more than ten million adult citizens living in the United States, according to a Pew Hispanic Center survey. About one-half of one percent of Mexicans in the U.S. sought absentee ballots for the presidential election in July during a registration period which ended last month.

Race and ethnicity are still very much a part of American politics, but a new study suggests that increasingly voters are selecting candidates based on their job performance, not just their racial affiliation.