| In the coming days, we can expect a lot of analysis of the role Latinos and new citizens had on the outcome of last night's historic vote. This is from the National Institute for Latino Policy: "The Editson/Mitofsky Exit Poll found that 66 percent of Latino voters supported Barack Obama, over 30 percent who voted for John McCain. This put to rest the argument that Latinos would not vote for a Black person and reverses gains in Latino support that the Republican Party had made with the Latino community (in 2004, 39 percent of Latinos voted for George W. Bush). "Now begins the analysis and speculation about what role the Latino vote played in this historic election. At the national level, because Obama's margin of victory in terms of Electoral College votes is projected to be so large, it can be argued that whether or not Latinos existed, Obama would have won this election handily anyway. "However, since the Electoral College is based on the vote in each state and most are winner-take-all systems, the role of the Latino vote in key states appears to have been important. From the early exit polls, states where the non-Latino vote went for McCain and in which it appears that the Latino vote for Obama shifted the overall vote in favor of Obama were Florida, Colorado and New Mexico. These three states gave Obama 41 electoral votes of the 338 he had won as of this writing. More dicey are Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia. In this sense, it appears that Latinos did not play the role of a 'swing vote' in this election." | 
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