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In this election Al Gore, I estimated from looking at the returns, got 89% of the Latino vote. Hillary Clinton got about 91%. On the Republican side, Bush got about 8%, Lazio got about 9%. When you look at party enrollment here in New York City, 88% of Latino registered voters are registered in the Democratic Party compared to 1996 it was 77%. What¹s occurring here is that picture of our community being very loyal to the Democratic Party which has been the case for a while. It even becomes more intense in terms of that loyalty.
The fact that we had 77% registered four years ago and it jumps to 88% within that party is interesting -- it's very dramatic. Now you can take that different ways. One is that we could be making more claims on the Democratic Party because we're one of the most important bases for them, in that sense, loyal bases for them. On the other hand, the critique is that we are overdependent on the Democratic Party and that they take us for granted. And certainly the results of this election indicate more that we're taken for granted rather than that we're having any kind of influence in terms of their policies or in terms of their strategies.
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in partnership with the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at Hunter College 
