Historical Hispanic partisan alignments, Hispanic outreach styles, and the theory of Hispanic surge-and-decline effects on Hispanic peripheral voters

Over the last decade, the Hispanic voting community has emerged as one of the most important demographic groups in United States politics, especially in recent presidential elections. Yet there has been very little research conducted on Hispanic voter turnout and voting behavior. When it comes to theories of minority voting behavior, resource theories significantly fail to capture the total dynamics of minority group voting behavior and turnout. For example, Hispanics have lower SES resources, such as education and income, relative to Anglos, but so do African-Americans, yet African-Americans vote at significantly much higher rates than Hispanics. One logical explanation as for why these models fail to explain fully Hispanic turnout behavior is the fact that almost all the research conducted has been on Anglos. This researcher proposes a new Hispanic voter model, a theory of Hispanic surge-and-decline effects on peripheral Hispanic voters, that adds the concept of self-activation vis-a-vis group consciousness to resource and mobilization explanations. This theory is analyzed using recent San Antonio Mayoral elections, New Mexico Gubernatorial elections and Colorado Senatorial elections. Time series analyses and multiple linear regression analyses are utilized to study precinct-to-the-same-precinct and county-to-the-same-county net change in turnout between elections. The results of these analyses strongly support the surge-and-decline theory. Specifically, Hispanic surges are tied to increases in peripheral Hispanic voters, and when viable Hispanic candidates seek office, Hispanic turnout increases significantly relative to both Anglo turnout and baseline Hispanic turnout, and when no viable Hispanic runs for office, Hispanic turnout decreases relatively. This has profound future implications. If the Republican and Democratic parties want to attract more Hispanic voters for their respective candidates, then these parties must recruit, run and support viable Hispanic candidates at all levels of government, including candidates the Vice Presidency and the Presidency. Based on the theory of Hispanic surge-and-decline effects, this researcher posits that the first party to select a viable Hispanic Vice Presidential candidate, and ultimately a viable Presidential candidate, will be the party that realigns the majority of Hispanic voters for at least three to four decades.Governmen