Over half of eligible Latinos voted in 2020—a historic first

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About 1 in 10 voters in last year’s election were Latino, with “extraordinary” registration and turnout among younger and U.S.-born Hispanics.

Even without the kind of spending on Latino turnout that some had hoped to see, they registered and voted in record numbers in the 2020 presidential election, according to a City University of New York study.

The election saw a dramatic rise in registration and voting by some 18.7 million Latinos, so that about 1 in 10 voters was Latino.

The big forces behind what the CUNY researchers described as the “extraordinary” Latino participation were record registration and turnout by younger Latinos ages 18 to 44, and a jump in the registration and voting by U.S.-born Latinos.

“For the first time, there are more Latinos registered than African Americans and we know that trend is going to continue,” said Luis Miranda, a Democratic consultant who serves on the boards of Latino advocacy groups and is the co-author of the study by the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies at CUNY.

Before 2020, the percent of Latinos eligible to vote who actually voted had never surpassed 50 percent, the researchers said.

But it hit 53.7 percent in November to help Democrat Joe Biden unseat then-President Donald Trump, a Republican. That compares to 47.4 percent in 2016, when Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

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