Many young Latino voters in Nevada bet on Sanders while their parents back Clinton

Feb 17, 2016

Last year, Nevada college student Ivan Soto was one of about 800,000 Latinos in the United States who turned 18 and became eligible to vote.

He and other millennials — those born in the 1980s and 1990s — make up nearly half of all eligible Latino voters and are increasingly seen as crucial to unlocking the Latino vote.

A fervent Bernie Sanders supporter who learned about the Vermont senator's campaign on Reddit and through Google searches, Soto reflects a growing generational divide in the Latino community that mirrors divisions in the wider electorate: Although many young Latinos are flocking to the Sanders campaign, many of their parents are backing Hillary Clinton.

"The leadership that is older is all Clinton, but the younger Latinos, they're with Sanders," said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, whose organization has been working in Nevada ahead of the state's Democratic caucus on Saturday.

Gonzalez said the rift is present in his own family. "My daughters are Sanders people," he said. "My wife is with Hillary."

How that division plays out will go a long way toward determining who wins the caucus. The contest has shaped up as a crucial test of Sanders' appeal to minority voters, whose backing he will need as the Democratic race moves from Iowa and New Hampshire, overwhelmingly white states, into a series of much more diverse arenas.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-latinos-millennials-20160217-story.html