The Latino vote has become a priority for presidential candidates from both Democratic and Republican parties, with both sides firing up their respective campaigns in states with significant Hispanic populations.
At the national level, 800,000 Latinos turn 18 every year, making them eligible to participate in the elections. California and Texas have the biggest Latino populations, but focus has been sharpest in states that are up for grabs like Nevada, Florida, New Mexico, and Colorado. Territories such as Virginia, where there is no dominant party and where there are some Latino communities, can also play a significant role, reported The Washington Post.
President Barack Obama won all of these states in the 2012 polls.
"There is no path for Republicans to win the presidency in 2016 without flipping heavily Hispanic states" that went for Obama, said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a center-left think tank. That is why "unprecedented amounts of money will be spent speaking to this community," he said.
There are more Latinos registered as Democrats, but Republicans think they have a chance as many are young with no solid partisan voting preference and share conservative social values like opposition to abortion rights.
Republicans cannot allow Democrats to win 71 percent of the Latino vote like Obama did in 2012, said Daniel Garza, the executive director of Koch-backed LIBRE, a project offering free services to Hispanics in many battleground states.
"We intend to double down our efforts" in this "constituency at a crossroads," he said. Republicans "don't need to win a majority, just inch it up."
"I have never seen the Latino vote prioritised in this way—and this early—in a meaningful way," said Cristóbal Alex, president of the Democratic-backed Latino Victory Project.
Marco Rubio is capitalising on his background as a son of a hotel bartender from Cuba and has asked Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison to head his campaign in Nevada.
A Hispanic candidate who lost her bid for lieutenant governor in the 2014 midterm polls, however, warned that her presence would not necessarily mobilise Latino pollgoers, NBC News wrote.
"Just because you have that representation on the ballot doesn't mean the Latino vote is going to turn out," said former Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, who is now vying for a Nevada House seat with another Latino, Rep. Ruben Kihuen, also Latino.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton told 1,200 Latino leaders in Las Vegas last week that she would do more than President Obama and any Republican bet to halt deportations and enact immigration reform.
Immigration has been the hardest issue for Republican candidates. There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country, many of whom are Latinos. There has been strong opposition from the Republican side to the executive action by Obama on immigration, which seeks to give legal status to those who are undocumented.
"It's a really important issue for me," said Laura Aguilera, 19, who has a close relative working in the US for two decades but cannot return to Mexico because she has no legal papers to show when she comes back to US soil.
"I want to hear that they will fix immigration and make things more equal for everybody," she said.
