U.S. Hispanic Vote No Longer in the Bag for Democrats

Although Hispanics tend to vote Democratic, the percentage of Latinos who call themselves Democrats has declined in the last decade, even as the overall number of Hispanic voters climbed.

In California—home to the nation's largest Hispanic population and a coveted cache of 55 electoral votes for the 2008 presidential election—nearly two of three Hispanic voters were registered Democrats in the mid-1990s. By 2006, that figure dropped as low as 56 percent, according to polling and registration data.

Research last year by the Public Policy Institute of California found that Hispanics in California are about equally divided among those who describe themselves as conservative, liberal and moderate.

And many Hispanic voters are choosing no party at all.