The analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center says that the percentage of the Latino electorate was also larger in the 2010 midterm elections than in earlier midterm votes, totaling 6.9 percent of all registered voters, compared with 5.8 percent in 2006.
The rapid growth in the U.S. Latino population has favored ever greater participation by that community in elections, with the 2010 Census finding that 50.5 million Hispanics lived in the United States last year, up from 35.3 million in 2000.
During the same decade, the number of eligible Latino voters also rose, from 13.2 million to 21.3 million.
However, although there are more Latinos now who never participate in U.S. elections, their representation within the electorate continues to be less than their weight in the general population.
In 2010, 16.3 percent of the U.S. population was Hispanic, but Latinos constituted just 10.1 percent of those eligible to vote and less than 7 percent of actual voters.
Pew says this gap is due to two factors: the youth of the Latino population - nearly 35 percent are under 18 - and the high proportion of Hispanic adults, 22.4 percent, who lack U.S. citizenship.
Thus, just 42.7 percent of the U.S. Latino population may vote, while in the case of whites that percentage is 77.7 percent, in the black community it is 67.2 percent and among Asians 52.8 percent.
In 2010, 31.2 percent of Latinos said they had voted, while 48.6 percent of whites said the same thing and 44 percent of African Americans.
Roughly 31 percent of Latino eligible voters last year were between 18 and 29, while for whites that percentage was 19.2 percent, for blacks it was 25.6 percent and for Asians 20.7 percent.
Only 17.6 percent of young Hispanic voters cast ballots, whereas among those age 30 and up participation was 37.4 percent.
The difference in participation of Latinos in elections compared with other groups is also due to the rapid increase in the percentage of Latinos who could vote, but don't. READ MORE
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