The Tea Party Will Be Gritting Its Teeth

Statistics published by the Census Bureau, the body responsible for carrying out the official census in the United States, will further increase the level of paranoia among the tea party and its supporters, particularly in those states that share a border with Mexico. Latinos account for more than half of the population increase in the United States over the last decade. They now represent 16.3 percent of the total population, 50.5 million people. Arizona, a state full of illegal immigrants, is overwhelmed.

In the year 2000, the number of people of Hispanic origin in the U.S. was 35.3 million. The number of Hispanics on American soil or Americans of Hispanic origin has grown by 43 percent. Shock and horror, before long, anglophones will no longer be in control on their own turf! Latinos account for almost a quarter (23.1 percent) of the population below the age of 17. The growth in this demographic sector of residents of Latin American origin has been 40 percent. A decade earlier, the under-17s only represented 17.1 percent of the country’s total population.

The number of Hispanics in the over-18 age group increased by 43 percent between 2000 and 2010. They now represent 14 percent of the total American population. Hispanics are the country’s largest minority group. Looking at the entire American population, ethnic and racial minorities account for 91.7 percent of total population growth. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for the remaining 8.3 percent.

For the most part (more than 76 percent), Latinos live in nine states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York and Texas. In the county of Los Angeles alone there are 4.7 million Latinos. In nine states outside of those regions with a traditionally large Hispanic population — for example, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee — the number of Hispanics has more than doubled.

These statistics are of interest because they could completely redesign the electoral map of the United States. Until now, Hispanics have not been united in supporting a particular party, like the blacks with the Democrats. Traditionally, they are more conservative than the black population, but their vote is not solid. George W. Bush, a hispanophone himself, received a large number of Hispanic votes when he was elected in 2004, whereas Gore received the biggest number of Hispanic votes in 2000. But the Republican anti-immigration policy has lost the party a good share of these votes. The GOP, given their alliance with the fiercely anti-immigration tea party, may have lost the reservoir of votes that naturally flowed their way. There’s a chance that this will strongly affect the balance of votes in 2012.