An analysis of new Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center finds that more than 6.6 million Latinos voted in last November’s election — a record for a midterm. This was an increase from about 5.6 million Latino voters in 2006 and just 3.5 million in 1994. Overall, Latinos represented 6.9% of all voters last November, up from 5.8% in 2006. Rapid population growth has helped fuel Latinos’ increasing electoral participation. Still, despite the increase in their voter participation rate, their representation among the electorate remains below their representation in the general population. In 2010, 16.3% of the nation’s population was Latino, but only 10.1% of eligible voters were Latino and fewer than 7% of voters were Latino. This voter-participation gap is driven by youth (34.9% of Latinos are younger than age 18) and non-citizenship (22.4% are of voting age, but are not U.S. citizens). Read More

Russell Heimlich  is a former web developer at Pew Research Center.