The effect of national origins on the voting behaviour of Hispanics in the United States

This thesis has taken a look at the way in which Hispanics have previously been measured in political science, a process that has typically taken on a large amount of aggregation of all but three major Hispanic American groups for clarity and other purposes, with the intention of proving that smaller groups did have specific voting intentions that were hidden by this aggregation of multiple groups into one. It will look at the way in which this has been done in the past, the backgrounds of each of these groups and what may cause groups to vote in particular ways during American Presidential and State Legislative elections to identify if there are significant differences between different Hispanic origins and the way in which they decide to vote for a political party at different levels. By using census data from large metropolitan areas with large Hispanic populations, and merging this data with election results as well as local economic data to determine their voting intentions. What we find is that at both presidential and state legislative levels, the origin of Hispanic Americans is a crucial factor in determining their vote at election time for some groups, including some which were previously aggregated into a large other category. We find that this category may no longer be suitable when dealing with Hispanic groups, and suggest new routes of investigation that can be taken following on from our findings.