
What will the UK learn from the US elections?
A reflection of the US vote last week showed beyond a reasonable doubt that the ethnic vote in the West will be the deciding factor for decades to come and political parties and their candidates who do not listen to the opinions and issues of ethnic groups will be dealt a serious blow at the elections.
The Hispanic voters in the US, who were instrumental in putting Barrack Obama back in the White House, now hope the president will work diligently in his second term to cross some big to-dos off their legislative wish list: jobs, affordable education, health care access and immigration reform.
Hispanics voted for Obama over Mitt Romney by a resounding 71 percent to 27 percent and may have put him over the top in several key swing states. The total number of potential Hispanic voters this year reached a record 23.7 million – up about 80 percent since 2000 – and Hispanics now compose about 10 percent of the total electorate, according to the Pew Centre. States like Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania, even Ohio — the Latino vote was a net gain for the preferred candidate and was the deciding factor or at least very, very close to being the decisive factor,
Political parties and their candidates in the UK must take note that most of the young eligible voters are of multicultural heritage and will make a huge difference if we take the recent police commissioners voting percentage of 20%, you can see how easy it is to make some huge upsets at the polls.
Saad Saraf
www.thinkethnic.com