Until recently, Latinos were nearly invisible on the national political scene, garnering little attention from political parties, candidates, and scholars alike. Much has changed in the last several decades, and Latinos are now the largest minority group in the country, making up more than 12 percent of the U.S. population. With a steady stream of immigrants from Mexico and Latin America, the proportion of Latinos is expected to more than double by mid-century to a quarter of the population. Once small and geographically concentrated in states in the American west and southwest, new patterns of settlement among immigrants to nontraditional gateway metropolitan areas in the United States has resulted in a highly diverse Latino population that is increasingly dispersed across states in the United States. Nevertheless, substantial populations of Latinos reside in five of the most electorally rich states in the United States – California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Illinois – and the dynamics of elections in those states and across the nation simply cannot be understood without accounting for Latino voters (Leighley 2001; Shaw et al. 2000).

Despite the momentous demographic changes and the resulting imperative to understand Latino electoral behavior, surprisingly little is known about how Latino voters are mobilized, and what impact that mobilization has on their voting behavior. In general, political scientists have focused their attention on developing models to explain voting among Anglos and African Americans.