Poll finds smaller share of Latino voters expected to vote in 2016

A smaller percentage of Latino registered voters are “absolutely” planning to cast a ballot this November, according to a new poll out Wednesday.

A Pew Research Center poll found that only about 69 percent of Latino voters are “absolutely certain” they’ll vote this year -- several points down from 2012, when 77 percent said they definitely expected to visit the polls.

In comparison to voters nationwide, 86 percent of those registered say they’re “absolutely certain” to vote in 2016.

Millennial Latino voters are the group with the sharpest decline in engagement, with 62 percent saying they were certain to vote this year. That’s 13 percentage points down from the last election, when 74 percent of millennial Hispanic registered voters said they would in 2012.

Hillary Clinton leads among registered Latino voters, with 58 percent favoring the Democratic nominee, while about one-in-five (19 percent) back Donald Trump. Third-party candidates get some support among Latinos, with 10 percent going to Libertarian party nominee Gary Johnson and six percent for the Green party’s Jill Stein.

Among the survey’s registered voters, more than half (54 percent) believe the Democratic party is more concerned about Latinos than the GOP. Eleven percent believe Republicans are more concerned with Latino voters. In contrast, 28 percent say the parties care for Latinos a similar amount.

The annual Pew Research Center National Survey of Latinos was conducted from Aug. 23 through Sept. 21. The poll surveyed 1,507 Latino adults, including 804 registered voters.  The margin of error for the full sample is 3.3 percentage points, while for registered voters, the margin of error is 4.6 percentage points.