Deportation Nation, Con't

Latinx voters despise the GOP, but Democrats have failed miserably to make the case that they can fix the problems facing communities in Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Texas, all home to the Senate races that will decide control of upper chamber in January. In a country where Donald Trump can end up in the Oval Office and any information you give the government can and will be used by ICE against your family, many Latinx voters are just tuning out politics altogether and will stay home in November.

Democrats and activists working to turn out Latino voters say they face several obstacles, some of them created by the party itself.

And they worry that anger toward Trump, rather than driving votes, is turning people off of politics altogether.

"The more noise there is in Washington, D.C., oftentimes it can be confusing and it can be intimidating to voters," said Dan Sena, who is overseeing an estimated $30 million outreach effort to young and minority voters as executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "I think there's been an intentional strategy from the White House to do that to communities of color."

Party organizers see potential in messages that emphasize bread-and-butter issues and community empowerment, but getting that to voters and registering new ones requires time, money and attention, all of which are in high demand to court other key voters.

About 55 percent of Latino voters reported that they had not yet been contacted by a campaign or party about registering to vote this year, according to a Latino Decisions survey for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials last week.

Hispanic turnout traditionally lags behind other demographic groups, especially in midterm elections, where it dropped to a record low of 27 percent nationally in 2014, compared with 45 percent among whites, according to the Pew Research Center. And recent polls show Latinos less enthused about November than other minorities.

The issue is compounded by the fact that the Latino voting population skews younger than the overall one.

"Age by itself is the single biggest predictor of turnout and no other variable comes close," said Matt Barreto, co-founder of the polling firm Latino Decisions. "But overlaid on that, the reason young people don't vote is because they don't feel the system is responsive to them."

Some Democrats worry this dynamic has created a dangerous cycle of futility: The party needs to engage millions of young Hispanic voters to win tomorrow, but pursuing them means less time spent on voters who are likely to show up and decide elections today.

Young voters don't vote.  Latinx voters don't vote.  And young Latinx voters?  Forget about it.  If they did vote,  all those states would be solid blue.  But right now, they don't have a reason to care.