Losing the minorities

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Over at The American Prospect, Kate Sheppard writes about black and latino voters, or, as we call em ’round here, Missed GOP Opportunities:

What should really worry Republicans is that the number of eligible minority voters is growing. More than 16 million Latinos will be eligible to vote in 2004, a 20 percent increase from 2000, according to the Pew Research Center. And while only 47 percent of eligible Latino voters went to the polls in 2004, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, voter registration drives by organizations like the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials and galvanizing issues like immigration, are expected to increase those figures. Growth in African American eligible voters isn’t as rapid, but it is still increasing faster than the number of eligible voters in the general population, and the number of African American voters who turned out on Election Day increased from 57 percent in 2000 to 60 percent in 2004.

By 2050, the Census Bureau projects that the U.S. population will be 23 percent Latino and 16 percent black. If the Republicans want to win, they’ll have to start talking to these voters sometime soon.

Of course, they could just keep skipping all the debates being held by minority groups. Fine by me.