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The Religious and Political Viewpoint of the Latino Community in America

Latinos, the most rapidly growing population group in the United States, now comprise the nation’s largest minority group. In order to understand how the Latin culture is made up of, we could look at statistics to see some unique characteristics and behaviours of this community. The first characteristic I found to be interesting is that religious beliefs play a big role in the Latin culture within every family. It is noticeable that in 2007, Pew Research showed that 64% of Latinos thought that “religion is very important” in comparison to only 4% claimed “religion is not important at all”. However, it is surprising that in 2014, there was a small decrease of 5% regarding the spiritual Latinos, while there were 4% more people who think religion is not significant than in 2007. That is to say, the younger generations are less likely to be spiritual than the older generations among the Latino community. Another interesting trend I notice is the Latino community has been more politically active in recent years. It is fascinating that more than one fourth of the voters (27%) in the 2018 midterm elections claimed that it was their first time to do so. In addition, the number of Latinos voters in Florida has rapidly increased in the period of 2006 to 2018. The biggest increase occurred in the 2018 election, where there was a 8.4% rise over 2016 in the number of voters compared to only 4.6% of increase in the 2014 midterm election over 2012, respectively. Therefore, it is clear that the younger generations of the Latino community have become more involved in voting and raising their voices for their overall benefits and prosperity. In conclusion, as the population of the Latino community shows no sign of decreasing in the near future, I expect the number of spiritual Latinos will decrease while the number of Latinos involved in political voting will increase.

Pew Research Center’s Survey on Importance of religion in one’s life among Latinos
Pew Research Center pre-election Survey

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