Presidential Candidates Campaigning for Iowa's Latino Vote

The race for the White House is heating up as it enters the home stretch, and the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney camps are scrambling to sway every possible voter to their cause. In Iowa, that means appealing to the growing Latino community. While the rest of the nation typically thinks of Iowa a state populated almost entirely by white farmers, the reality is that it has become more diverse over the last decade; the Washington Post says the state's Latino population grew an astounding 84 percent from 2000-2010.

It isn't known precisely how many Latinos will turn out to the Iowa booths on November 6, but the League of Latino United Citizens is running a registration drive that it hopes will result in a 15,000 increase in voters from the 2008 presidential election. That would translate to a total of 50,000 Latino voters in the state, comprising 3 percent of the total voting populace. Those numbers might not appear large enough to make a significant difference, but the most recent poll numbers suggest that the race is close enough that those votes could be crucial to winning Iowa.

“The Latino vote could be a decisive factor in the next election, at least here in Iowa,” Jose Zacarias, who emigrated there from Mexico and housed Obama campaign workers for two weeks in the last election, told the Post. “I see a lot of enthusiasm.”

President Obama rode two thirds of the state's Latino voters to victory in 2008. Romney's campaigners are doing everything possible to prevent that from happening again. The Republicans have been pushing the idea that Romney is better for the economy and can create more jobs, which they hope appeals to unemployed Iowa Latinos. Meanwhile, Obama's camp asserts that their program designed to help young illegal immigrants, the health care reform law and boosts to college aid are in Latinos' best interests.

It's too early to tell which candidate's policies will win over local Latinos or if doing so will be enough to push one candidate over the other in the total Iowa vote count, so both sides will continue to campaign heavily towards them in the coming weeks. Whatever happens, it should make for an exciting race.