AP

THIS is census year in America, and although we hesitate to pre-empt the results of a mighty exercise that will involve over a million staff and whose calculations will not be complete until late December, we can confidently predict one finding. America's Hispanic population, which is expected to come in at almost 16% of the total, will have overtaken its black population, likely to be put at around 2.5 percentage points less. In 2000, the last time this count was performed, 12.5% of the population was Hispanic, and 12.9% African-American.

Thanks to rapid immigration, legal and illegal, and a large stock of young people with a high birth-rate, America's Latino population has grown twice as fast over the past decade as either its white or black population; and the gap is going to keep on widening. Half the babies in Texas, for instance, are born to Latina mothers, even though Latinos make up under 40% of that state's population. And this is not only a phenomenon of the border states. Many new arrivals from Mexico head directly to look for jobs in the big cities of the south-east and north-east; and second- and third-generation Hispanics, perfectly acculturated by America's melting pot, are now to be found everywhere. In Chicago's public-school district, 41% of the students are Hispanic.

This steady advance has large consequences. Most obviously, it is changing the balance of American politics. The decennial census is the basis on which federal money is disbursed and seats in the House of Representatives, and consequently Electoral College votes, are allocated. Once the results of this year's census are known, up to 18 states will see their congressional tallies altered. The big, mostly white, states of the north-east will be the losers. The Hispanic-rich border region will gain: Arizona and Nevada will both pick up a seat and booming Texas may get as many as four. Florida will also gain, though highly taxed California has seen an exodus that has counteracted its Hispanic surge.

America's Hispanics, unlike its blacks, have traditionally failed to punch at their true weight. In the current House of Representatives in Washington, dc, there are only 26 Hispanics, about 6% of the total; there are 41 African-Americans, much closer to their share of the population. Hispanic senators have been few and far between, as have Hispanic governors.

Turning out and turning blue

One reason is that Hispanics have at least until recently been poorly organised. But this is changing (see article). The Hispanic voter-turnout rate increases at every election. It hit 50% in 2008, up from 47% in 2004, though that is still a lot less than the 66% recorded by non-Hispanic whites or the 65% by blacks. In a fair number of keenly contested states, the Hispanic population in effect holds the balance of power; and as long as they continue to vote solidly Democratic (as they did in 2008, by a whopping 67-31% margin), that is great news for the blue party. The big Hispanic vote for Barack Obama in Florida turned that vital state from Republican to Democratic; the Hispanic vote also proved crucial in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. It is not impossible to imagine that, in time, Texas's huge Hispanic population could turn America's second-largest state Democratic.

If the Republicans want to avoid that fearful fate, they need to reconnect with Hispanic voters, and fast. In principle it ought not to be too hard. Culturally conservative, strongly religious, family-oriented and with a long and distinguished tradition of service in America's armed forces, Hispanics are natural Republicans. But they are also, on the average, poorer than whites, and they are rightly incensed at anything that smacks of xenophobia. George W. Bush managed to appeal pretty well to Hispanics, scoring an estimated 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004. But from 2005 onwards, a hysterical Republican reaction to the prospect of immigration reform (which aimed, among other things, to regularise the position of the 12m or so illegal immigrants living, for the most part peacefully and industriously, within America's borders) undid all that.

As well as the census, 2010 will see another attempt to tackle the immigration dossier. It would be over-cynical to see this as a Democratic ploy to lure the Republicans into alienating a vital group of voters all over again. But there is great peril for a party that is in the process of confining itself to white voters and Southern states. If Republicans could this year once again embrace the opportunity that America's Hispanics and its proximity to Mexico represents, they could do themselves a power of good.