Which Is It — High Or Low Latino Voter Turnout In 2010?

The Pew Hispanic Center released a report today, “The Latino Electorate in 2010: More Voters, More Non-Voters,” which has been variously reported in the media as meaning that Latinos either voted in great numbers, or hardly at all, in the 2010 election. Well, which is it?

This is the same story we saw in last year’s election when, on the one hand, Latino voters in Nevada saved Harry Reid and the Senate, but at the same time were too apathetic to change anything or make their voices heard. Can it really be both? Is there a truth and a falsity in this matter?

I posit that it doesn’t really matter. Not that I’m trying to get philosophical or anything, but in matter of fact, in each of our lives, there is no such thing as an objective reality. I’d say the same thing is true when it comes to Latino voters. Take the Harry Reid example. It’s easy to see how Latino voter participation managed to help Harry Reid keep his seat (not that hard given the fact that Sharron Angle was pretty openly anti-Latino), but elsewhere in the country Democrats who felt Latino voters owed them votes just for not being as anti-Latino as Republicans (but yet not really focusing on issues important to Latinos) had abandoned them.

Getting back to the Pew report, it seems to try to have it both ways:

However, even though more Latinos than ever are participating in the nation’s elections, 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 and fewer than 7% of voters were Latino.

So there you have it. The reason there are more Latino voters voting than ever is because in pure numbers this is true. Yet, when you think about Latinos as a proportion of the U.S. population, their participation is small — but this is because there are a ton of Latinos who are under 18. I’d also dare to say that, while we like to think of ourselves as moving past stereotypes, isn’t it easy to just say Latinos are too lazy to vote and so stay at home instead?

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD