Arturo Vargas from NALEO projects that as many as 12.2 million Hispanics could vote in 2012. In the  2010 off year election, the Hispanic share of the national electorate increased to 6.9 percent from 5.8 percent in 2004. In the 2010 Nevada and Colorado Senate races, Democrats Reid and Bennett would not have been re-elected without the growth in the Hispanic vote (e.g., in 2010, the Hispanic share of the overall electorate according to exit polls grew to 18 percent in Nevada and it broke overwhelmingly for Harry Reid), reports The Hill.

“Wise candidates and party’s will correspondingly engage and invest in the growing mass of Hispanic voters, no longer to content to placate a base out of touch with the new math of American politics,” says Bruce Goyry writing for The Hill.