Rodolfo O. de la Garza

Examining Latino Turnout in 1996: A Three-State, Validated Survey Approach

As Latino populations in the United States increase, accurately characterizing their turnout is central to understanding how the post-New Deal party system will evolve. Yet we presently have little data on either their turnout or the dynamic by which such participation occurs. We estimate Latino voting rates in the 1996 presidential election by validating selfreported turnout from a post-election survey of Latinos in California, Florida, and Texas. We then use these estimates as dependent variables for multivariate models of Latino turnout. The data show that the validated Latino turnout was much lower than the aggregate turnout for the 1996 election. In addition, many of the factors that have explained aggregate voting were also significantly correlated with Latino turnout. These correlations, however, were stronger for self-reported than for validated Latino voting. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Latino voting in 1996 was the significant and positive effect of contacting by a Latino group, which suggests that mobilization efforts may be critical to eradicating the turnout gap and incorporating Latinos into the existing party system. ith each national election during the past twenty years has come the prediction that Latino turnout would be massive and decisive. As of 1996, despite more voters and a rapidly growing population, the promise of an overwhelming Latino turnout had not been realized. There were, however, several reasons to expect that the 1996 election would witness the long-awaited dramatic increase in Hispanic voting. First, Latino leaders and officeholders spurred the Democrats to develop a major Latino outreach effort (Subervi-Velez and Cunningham 1999). Republican Latinos, although less influential than their Democratic counterparts, promoted a similar initiative (de la Garza and DeSipio 1997). Second, Latino leaders linked the anti-immigrant elements of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act to Californias Proposition 187 (which was passed in 1994 and sought to deny social services to the children of illegal aliens) in hopes of mobilizing Latino voters nationwide. Third, in response to provisions in the new welfare reform, Latino immigrants began naturalizing at a record pace, greatly increasing the potential numbers of Latino voters (Freeman et al. 1998). Finally, motor-voter provisions and Latino registration drives helped raise the number of Latino registered voters to 6.6 million, almost 1.5 million more than 1992 (Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project 1997). The 1996 election is thus exceptionally interesting to students of Latino voting. In addition to a growing population, increased registration, and a favorable political context for Latino participation, concerted efforts to mobilize Latinos may have increased turnout. Here we examine the influence of mobilization and other political and demographic variables on turnout in 1996. Our data come from a three-state, post-election survey of Latinos. We find that validated Latino turnout was much lower than esti-

¿Paisanos, pochos o aliados políticos?

El proposito de este trabajo es analizar el desarrollo de las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y Mexico y evaluar sus implicaciones para el papel que tendran en el futuro los chicanos en el diseno y aplicacion de las politicas que norman estas relaciones. Se revisan los vinculos entre la poblacion de origen mexicano en Estados Unidos, el gobierno mexicano y los propios mexicanos. Se presenta una sintesis historica de esta relacion, se examina el desarrollo reciente de los hechos mas relevantes ocurridos en Estados Unidos y Mexico y que estan ligados a los problemas de los chicanos, y se analizan las implicaciones de estos acontecimientos en el futuro inmediato

Book Review: Los Dos Mundos: Rural Mexican Americans, Another AmericaLos Dos Mundos: Rural Mexican Americans, Another America. By BakerRichardLogan:Utah State University Press, 1995.

impressed with how much can be fairly concluded from such a small body of documents. And yet, for Bartholomew, this study was a labor oflove; it is the story ofher own fame ily writ large. Several of the women she discusses at length are her own ancestors. Within that context, Bartholomew was in search of herself and in the process left no box of documents unopened. At its best, Audacious WOmen provides basic information on the small group of British women who chose not only to covert to Mormonism, but also to leave their native land for the American West. It is in that specific context that these women might be considered audacious. Bartholomew follows her introduction with a chapter on the many different stereotypes about Mormons in general and Mormon women in particular. One feels sheepish attempting to catalog and analyze ideas which were not logical, she writes. But since so much of the fanciful in [popular] literature came to be accepted as fact, the content ought to be approached methodically (pp. 2-3). The majority of the book provides the basic factual information on British Mormon immigrant women and shows the conflicts between the stereotypes and reality. The two best chapters are the one devoted to the Mormon conversion experience and the one devoted to the emigration process. Most important in these chapters is the clear evidence that these women converted to Mormonism of their own volition and that they left Britain willingly for a new life in Zion. Contrary to the common nineteenth century stereotype, these women were not unwilling prisoners of polygamous marriages. Bartholomew is to be applauded for not overstating the impact of these women on American society. She notes that although one out of four immigrants to the United States in the nineteenth century was British, only one out of 150 of those British immigrants was Mormon. To be sure, these immigrants represented a quarter of the population of Utah, but they had little impact outside that territory. Audacious WOmen will be ofgreat interest to readers concerned with the history of Mormons, women, the American West, or any combination of these three topics. However, the book will serve as little more than a footnote in the historiography of American immigration.

Book Review: Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.SInside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. By CalavitaKittyNew York:Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc., 1992

of individual experiences, periodization of emigration and immigration flows by country and frequent comparative glimpses to other societies. People certainly do not become mere figures in this study. In a particularly felicitous phrase, Nugent reduces the image of unlimited opportunities to the sober concept of migrants preferring unknown possibilities to known impossibilities (P. 96). The comparative approach permits new insights. For example, the classic description of two ltalies, industrializing North and an agrarian South, is useful for other societies. The British Isles and other states consist of industrial heartlands and less developed or even purely agrarian areas ofsurplus population or demographic saturation, as Nugent terms it. Germany, after Great Britain the second largest donor society, ranks only tenth in emigration per 1000 of population. It was also, after the United States, the second largest importer oflabor migrants. Comparative approaches have also shown the concept ofAmerican exceptionalism to be a dead horse for long. But national rhetoric and scholarly ideologues seem to have an uncanny ability to present the carcass as alive and well. Nugent starts from the premise that experiences of states or societies are distinct and, perhaps, unique, but that exceptionalism, Sonderwegin the German case, and other claims to special status need proof. In his analysis, Brazil appears to be the exceptional case, if compared to the other immigration countries, because of low immigration despite great size (p, 135), while American development continued without systematic or exceptional variations from the other urbanized, industrialized nations in the transatlantic region (p. 165). Its asset in respect to farmers migration (as opposed to labor migration) was the availability of cheap, accessible land governed by land laws that encouraged smallholding (p. 164). As regards the concept ofdemographic transition, which is commonly regarded as producing demographic saturation and, thus, as causing migration, Nugent first takes modernization theory to task for its vagueness: But problems arise as soon as one tries to define traditional and modern carefully and relate them to concrete situations, past or present (p. 8). He then refers to the results of the Princeton European Fertility Project which produced no certain confirmation of the theory (Coale and Watkins, p. 10). More complex models of push and pull and individual agency are needed, indeed. Did traditionbound men and women move to modern societies? Migrants, Nugent concludes, made goal-achievement oriented decisions, they may not have been visionaries but they were hardly inert or without ideas for self-advancement (p, 164). Nugents study, well illustrated and documented, deserves a wide readership and will become a must for courses on migration history. It is analytically incisive and illuminating by its comparative approach. It also stands as a model on how to overcome national narrowness. This reviewer still believes in we shall overcome.