Last spring, Donald Trump launched his 2016 Republican presidential campaign with disparaging remarks against Mexicans and tough talk on immigration. While his hardline stance is a key factor in his surprising popularity, the "Trump effect" – a spike in new voter registration among Latinos upset by his rhetoric – could lead to his and other anti-immigrant candidates' ultimate defeat.

Latinos make up 13 percent of all eligible U.S. voters, a record 27 million people, and nearly half of them millennials. Already the largest minority group in the U.S., the difference-making potential of increased Latino electoral participation is huge.

According to a Pew Research Center report released last week, the biggest driver of growth among Latino eligible voters is the 3.2 million who will have turned 18 and become eligible to vote between 2012 and Election Day 2016. In the same period, another 1.2 million Hispanics who legally immigrated to the U.S. will have naturalized and become U.S. citizens.

Organizers are pushing to take advantage of those demographic shifts and expand upon them, holding citizenship drives and rallies to raise awareness about how Republicans' policies harm the Latino community.

While Hispanics have historically turned out on election day on lower rates than other groups – a factor compounded by the high percentage of young people, who also vote less frequently than older Americans – immigrants rights groups are banking on a different history repeating itself.



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In 1994, then-California Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, urged voters to pass a ballot measure denying immigrants and their children who were in the state illegally from obtaining public education and health care. While the proposition passed – it was eventually struck down in federal court – California Latinos registered to vote in droves, increasing their overall totals by 50 percent.

President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, benefited heavily in his 1996 re-election bid from a naturalization campaign led by Vice President Al Gore, doubling the Latino share of the electorate in many states.

Something similar is happening in Arizona, thanks to the fervently anti-immigrant Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who on Tuesday endorsed Trump for president. In 1992, the year before Arpaio took office, Latinos made up 9 percent of the electorate; in 2012 they nearly doubled their turnout rate to 17 percent. Analysts estimate that number could reach 23 percent in 2016.