The historic poll, Chicago Latino Voters and the 2015 Mayoral Runoff, provided a close prediction of Latino voter behavior in the municipal runoff election. Conducted before the election, the poll by Latino Decisions and co-sponsored by the Latino Policy Forum, National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, and Univision Chicago surveyed a representative sample of 406 registered voters in the city of Chicago from March 16-20.
The 2015 Election Analysis, conducted by Univision Chicago, highlights the ways in which the March poll correlated with results of Latino voter turnout and growth of Latino voters during the first mayoral runoff election in Chicago history.
The March poll found that 61 percent of Latino voters surveyed said they would vote for Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and 18 percent for Rahm Emanuel, while 21 percent were undecided. The election outcome shows that 61.5 percent of Latinos voted for Garcia and 38.5 % voted for Emanuel. In comparison to the poll, the results for Garcia show that there’s only a .5 percent difference. The poll, however, did not predict the percentage of votes that would go to Emanuel as he did better than projected.
The poll also found that voters demonstrated an increased level of interest in the election. This enthusiasm proved true as Latino voter turnout growth outpaced the total growth of voters in the general election in majority Latino wards. The percentage of Latino voters who voted in Latino majority wards was 40.9 percent, compared to the 34 percent turnout of voters in all wards.
“It’s validating to see that the results of the poll were so closely aligned with the election outcome. It speaks to the sound methodology that was used to learn what Latino voters, in particular, were thinking leading up to Election Day,” said Doug Levy, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Univision Chicago. “We look forward to continuing to participate in the electoral process in ways that illuminate the critical importance of Hispanic voters.”
While both the results and the poll highlight the potential impact of the Latino vote when it comes to civic engagement throughout the city of Chicago, there’s still work to be done. Out of 1.4 million total eligible voters in the city of Chicago, only about 39 percent voted in the city’s mayoral runoff election.
“The real winner was apathy because more than half of the [eligible] voters in the city of Chicago did not vote in this election,” said the Forum’s executive director Sylvia Puente in a post-election interview with Chicago’s WBEZ.
To learn more, the results of the election analysis are accessible online here and the full findings of the poll are available here.