Hoffman and Appiah (2008) examined race and religion in political participation by analyzing church involvement. The authors focused on Blacks and Whites because Blacks tend to be more involved in the church, compared to their White counterparts. The data was gathered from a research study that was done by the Saguaro Center at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. This study was conducted by a telephone survey from July to November 2000 in which 2,942 Blacks and 17,115 Whites participated (Hoffman & Appiah, 2008). The independent variable was race and there were other demographic variables such as education and income that were included as a control variable in the regression analysis (Hoffman & Appiah, 2008). The dependent variable was voting that focused on the 1996 presidential race of Bill Clinton against Bob Dole and Ross Perot (Hoffman & Appiah, …show more content…
Therefore, Latinos is another minority group with a low level of political participation. Latinos are one of the fastest growing minority groups in the United States (Masuoka 2008). The Latino population had seen a rapid growth over the years. There were 14.6 million in 1980 than in 1990 there were 22.4 million and in 2000 there was 35.3 million Latinos in the United States (Michelson, 2003). However, they have the lowest turnout rate to vote of any ethnic group or race in a midterm election (Krogstad & Lopez, 2014). There were 31.2% of Hispanics that voted in 2010, compared to 48.6% of whites, 31% of Asians, and 44% of blacks. Latino made up 8% of eligible voters but had grown from 8.6% in 2006 to 11% in 2014 (Krogstad & Lopez, 2014). There are more than 25 million eligible Hispanics voters, compared to 2006 at 17.3% (Krogstan & Lopez, 2014). While California is expected to have about 39% of the population being Latinos where whites would not be the majority (Krogstan & Lopez, 2014). New Mexico had the largest population of Latino at 47% followed by California at 39%, then Texas at 38.2% (Lopez, 2014). While Alabama had witnessed a 158% increase of the Hispanic population between 2000 and 2011 (Lopez, 2014). Latinos have a low voter turnout rate compared to Whites (Jackson, 2003). The numbers of eligible Latinos voters are very important to a potential candidate. Therefore,