Barack Obama retained enough support from key elements of his base to win reelection, even as he lost ground nationally since 2008. In particular, Obama maintained wide advantages among young people, women, minorities, and both the less affluent and the well-educated.

Overall, Obama benefited from relatively strong turnout – both nationally and in key battleground states – among young people and minorities. Obama won voters younger than 30 by a somewhat smaller margin than he did four years ago, but these voters made up about as large a share of the electorate as they did in 2008, according to national exit polls conducted by the National Election Pool. Moreover, African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans backed Obama by huge margins.

Read more on our Campaign 2012 page.

Latinos voted for President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden over Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan by a margin of more than two-to-one in the 2012 presidential election, 71% versus 27%, according to an analysis of exit polls by the Pew Hispanic Center, a Project of the Pew Research Center.

Obama’s national vote share among Hispanic voters is the highest seen by a Democratic candidate since 1996.

In this year’s campaign, the Hispanic vote was an important building block for Obama’s win in several key states. In Colorado, Obama carried the Latino vote by a wide margin-75% to 23%. In Nevada, Obama won the Hispanic vote 70% versus 25%. In both states the Hispanic share of voters increased. In Colorado, 14% of voters were Hispanic, up from 13% in 2008. In Nevada, the Hispanic share was 18%, up from 15% in 2008.

In the case of Florida, the state’s growing non-Cuban population-especially growth in the Puerto Rican population in central Florida-helped contribute to the President’s greater advantage among Hispanic voters this year over 2008. According to the Florida state exit poll, 60% of Hispanic voters supported Obama while 39% voted for Romney.

The minority groups that carried President Obama to victory yesterday by giving him 80% of their votes are on track to become a majority of the nation’s population by 2050, according to projections by the Pew Research Center. They currently make up 37% of the population, and they cast a record 28% of the votes in the 2012 presidential election, according to the election exit polls.By 2050, the Hispanic share of the U.S. population could be as high as 29%, up from 17% now. The black proportion of the population is projected to be unchanged at 13%, while the Asian share is projected to increase to 9% from its current 5%. Non-Hispanic whites, 63% of the current population, will decrease to half or slightly less than half of the population by 2050.

The forces behind this transformation are a mix of immigration, births and deaths. The United States is more than four decades into what has been, in absolute numbers, the biggest immigration wave in its history-more than 40 million arrivals. Unlike previous waves that were almost entirely from Europe, the modern influx has been dominated by Hispanic and Asian immigrants.

These immigrants, like those from previous centuries, tend to have higher shares of women of childbearing age and higher birth rates than the U.S.-born population. Most of the growth in the Latino population and much of the growth in the Asian population will be driven by births rather than immigration. At the same time, the native-born white population is aging, and births to white mothers have been declining.

Read more on our Campaign 2012 page.

In his re-election victory, Democrat Barack Obama narrowly defeated Republican Mitt Romney in the national popular vote (50% to 48%). Obama’s margin of victory was much smaller than in 2008 when he defeated John McCain by a 53% to 46% margin, and he lost ground among white evangelical Protestants and white Catholics.

But the basic religious contours of the 2012 electorate resemble recent elections – traditionally Republican groups such as white evangelicals and weekly churchgoers strongly backed Romney, while traditionally Democratic groups such as black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, Jews and the religiously unaffiliated backed Obama by large margins.

Q. Hispanics were a key group that supported Barack Obama in 2008. How important a role will they play in 2012?

A. Hispanic support for Barack Obama this year remains at levels similar to 2008. Exit polls four years ago showed that Obama won 67% of the Latino vote and John McCain won 31%. The most recent numbers from Pew Research surveys show 70% of Latino registered voters saying they plan to vote for Obama and 26% saying they plan to vote for Mitt Romney.

The big question this year will be how many Hispanics, as well as how many in the public overall, turn out to vote. Currently a record number of Hispanics – 23.4 million – are eligible to vote. That’s up from 19.5 million in 2008. And along with the growing number of potential voters, the actual number of Hispanic voters in presidential – and midterm – elections has been on the rise. A record 9.7 million voted in 2008.

The turnout rate among eligible Hispanic voters also has been on the rise and reached 50% in 2008. But it continues to lag turnout rates among white non-Hispanics (66% in 2008) and black non-Hispanics (65% in 2008). It’s too early to tell how many Hispanics will vote in 2012, but since the mid-1980s, each presidential – and midterm – election has seen a record number of Hispanic voters.

Still, 2012 is a different election. Four years ago, the two states with the biggest Hispanic populations and the most Hispanic voters – California and Texas – played a more important role because of the Democratic primary fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. There was no similar fight this year that went through those states. Nearly half of Hispanic eligible voters live in California or Texas. Most political experts expect Obama to win California and Romney to win Texas.

Q. In 2008, Hispanics made up 7.4% of voters nationwide. That’s well below their share of the population at the time – about 15%. Why the difference?

A. Hispanics are younger and less likely to hold U.S. citizenship than other groups. These two factors alone explain much of the difference in Hispanic representation among the nation’s voters. Our analysis of the 2010 election showed that more than half of the nation’s Hispanic population was ineligible to vote that year for either of those two reasons. By comparison, three-fourths of whites, two-thirds of blacks and more than half of Asians were eligible to vote.

Q. How important is where the Latino populations are located? In what states can we expect Latino voters to play a big role this fall?

A. Though nearly half of all Latino eligible voters are in California and Texas, neither is a battleground state this year. States like Florida, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado are all battlegrounds with significant Hispanic voter populations. Hispanics could play an important role in Virginia and North Carolina too. In Florida, Nevada and Colorado, Latinos make up about 15% of each state’s eligible voters while in Virginia and North Carolina, they compose less than 5% of both states’ eligible voters.

In Florida, about 1.5 million Hispanics are registered to vote, up from 1.4 million in 2008.

Q. What are the issues most important to Latino voters?

A. Jobs and the economy top the list. After that come education and health care. Immigration is also seen as a top issue, but fewer registered Latino voters rate it as an “extremely important issue,” according to a survey we did in late 2011. Interestingly, our research from last year found a majority of Hispanics opposed Obama’s deportation policy, but that was before the president announced recently that his administration would not enforce deportations for some children of immigrants who arrived illegally.

Q. What do the demographic trends say about the future? It looks as if there are growing Latino populations in many southern states that could have greater influence in elections going forward?

A. This is a gradual process, but one of growing numbers. The greatest recent growth has been in the Southeast, including states like Georgia and South Carolina . Even so, Hispanics are still a small share of the eligible voters – less than 5% in each of those states.

Moving forward, Latinos will be a greater share of all voters nationally and in many states. Exactly how this will evolve remains to be seen.

See also: How Hispanics Voted in the 2008 Election

These data, and more, are contained in a new statistical profile of Latino eligible voters in Florida by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. In addition to official voter registration data, the statistical profile provides key demographic and socioeconomic information about Florida’s 2.1 million Latino eligible voters and other major groups of eligible voters in Florida based on tabulations of the Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey.

See the full fact sheet.