Super Tuesday: The Latino Vote

LOCAL and NATIONAL REPORTS — On Tuesday, voters 24 states, including New Mexico, will head to the polls to cast their ballot in either a primary or a caucus.

An enormous cache of delegatesis at stake for Super Tuesday – not enough to clinch a nomination but plenty enough to mint a runaway favorite, or even two.

To win the party nomination, a candidate needs to capture half the party’s delegates.

The two dozen contests Tuesday will deliver 1,023 Republican and 1,681 Democratic delegates.

After months when it was all about expectations and momentum, not to mention confusion, real numbers are finally becoming important.

“Right now, they’re not even a tenth of the way there and the same is pretty much true for the Republicans,” said Gregory Rocha, UTEP political science professor.

The complex system can make for some strange result. A candidate could win a majority of states and still end up not winning as many delegates as the other candidate.

“If it turns out that no decisions have been made nationally who the Republican candidate or Democratic candidate is going to be and they come here to Texas, there will be a tremendous upsurge in the number of people who vote,” Rocha said.

And this year, more than ever before, the race to the White House will be won delegate by delegate. Accordingly, the Latino vote could have extra resonance this year.

“What might stand out and surely would for Latino voters is the issue of immigration, which is still very important,” Rocha said.

Many of the super tuesday states– California, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico have large Latino populations. “That’s when we really start to see the delegate count change,” he said.

Texas, which is often an afterthought in the primary process, may become the deciding factor.

Ballots cast by Texas voters could count in a big way.