Young Latino Voters Trending to Bernie Sanders as Latino Vote Emphasized

The Latino vote will be very important his election, speakers at a UW-Milwaukee forum said, as a Media Milwaukee survey of young Latino voters shows they are trending toward Democrat Bernie Sanders in the presidential election.

The time to make decisions is close. We are in primary elections week. Media and candidates started to bombard us with advertisements. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, to emphasize the importance of elections, held the Forum of Latino Affairs on campus with the topic The Latino Vote. The event was organized by the Latino Student Union and highlighted the importance of the Latino vote for this election.

In the Latinos in Politics workshop, state Rep. JoCasta Zamarripa emphasized the importance of the Latino vote for this election. At the same time, she explained the difficulty of being a Latina representative in Wisconsin. Zamarripa wanted to inspire young Latinos to be leaders. Zamarripa’s objective in the workshop was to influence young people to help their community.

She said that the Latino is underrepresented and there are not enough Latino politicians in Milwaukee. The representative advised to the young ones how to get involved in politics. These days, the Millennials do not trust the government because of lack of representation and effectiveness, she said.

“Go and cast the vote especially for the members of the family that may not have the right to vote,” said Zamarripa.

Media Milwaukee also surveyed 12 Latino students about their political preferences. Democrat Bernie Sanders had the most support, with Hillary Clinton polling second and some undecided.

The event took place at the UW-Milwaukee Union. It was the third consecutive year that it was held at the university. The special guests that were in the event were Dr. Paru Shah from the UWM political science department, professor Edward Fallone from Marquette University, Dr. Enrique Figueroa from UWM’s Roberto Hernandez Center, Zamarripa, Dr. Grant Silva from the department of philosophy at Marquette and Executive Director Public Allies Ava Hernandez.

“It has several purposes; the first one is to unite the community by talking about the problems that really affect us. The second one is to energize and motivate the people to get involved in the community and that way make a difference,” said Advisory Committee Member Gabriela Nagy.

There are 350,000 Latinos in Wisconsin, which means that Latinos are about 6 percent of the population. Thirty-seven percent of Latinos are 30–years- old or younger that are registered to vote. The event had three workshops. People had the choice to take either Latino and politics, immigration reform, and leadership actions to help to build a fair and equitable society.

There are a lot of Latinos who are not interested in voting as well as they are not informed about the current issues that affect the community. For those people, Zamarripa told the young Latinos to take actions.

“Find the issues that he is passionate about and talk to him about it, that’s how I would start with,” said Zamarripa.

Zamarripa is running for re-election as a representative for the eight Assembly State district after winning re-election in 2014.

Since the event was held at UWM, Media Milwaukee decided to survey the Latino students. Twelve students took the survey, ranging in age from 19-years-old to 31-years-old. From those 12 students, nine of them are Democrats, and the rest said that their vote is based on issues and not on a political party.

When it came to candidate support and voting, there was some variety in the results. Five of them are going to vote for Bernie Sanders, three of them are in between Sanders and Clinton, two of the students don’t know who are they voting for, one student will vote for Hillary Clinton, and the last one will not vote. Even though the students support different candidates, they all had the same common interest in issues. The 12 participants are interested in healthcare, immigration reform and education.

Latino students felt the Democrats tend to be more in line with their thinking on those types of issues although some Latinos have a more conservative philosophy because of the tight relationship that they have with religion. However, the Republican Party’s stances on immigration reform are making some young Latinos trend Democratic, the survey showed.

Casio Muniz is a professor in the Spanish and Portuguese department. Muniz has taught a class called Political Science: Politics of the World Nation. Muniz believes that in this election some of the candidates are in the extreme side of the political spectrum.

“It seems like the issues here are pretty well divided with one side of the political spectrum being friendlier towards immigrations policies and the other one being stricter about the enforcement about those policies. That seems to dived the Latino community around the political spectrum,” said Muniz.

When it comes to candidates and the Latino support, the professor assures that the Latino will take the Democratic path. The fact that some of the Republican candidates are perceived as extremist means the Latinos are going to elect someone that they can trust and know will not harm the community.

“It seems like historically the Latino community tends to be more inclined towards Hillary Clinton; she has more exposure.” said Muniz. “The Clintons have been around for quite a while.”

The professor also believes that things will not be it easier for the Clintons to get into the White House. He believes that the Latino Millennials are going to affect Clinton’s campaign.

“It seems that Sanders is getting a lot of attention and momentum in the Latino community as well. Things might change especially because Sanders seems to have a broad appeal to young constituencies and among the Latino, the millennials are the majority. Forty-four perspective voters among the Latino community are young voters,” said Muniz.