Book: Newly-registered Latino voters put Sanders over the top in Nevada

In a new book coming out Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign lieutenant Chuck Rocha says the campaign’s overwhelming success with Latinos in Nevada was due in part to Latino voters who registered after President Trump was elected in 2016.

The claim is significant because it could affect how national campaigns pursue Hispanic voters — a demographic that’s historically suffered from a chicken-and-the-egg cycle of low investment from campaigns and low participation numbers.

Rocha’s campaign tell-all book, “Tío Bernie: The Inside Story of How Bernie Sanders Brought Latinos to The Political Revolution,” will be officially released Wednesday.

“In campaigns, you have to identify voters, put them in a spreadsheet, and then cross-match them to a voter file. There were about 18,000 Latinos in Nevada who caucused in 2016, so you start with them,” wrote Rocha.

“My secondary targeting was Latinos who actually vote in congressional races and other primaries, but haven’t caucused. There was some overlap, but it added another 20,000 voters. Now, we’re at close to 40,000. Almost a hundred thousand Latinos showed up to vote in the last general election. Removing the overlapping voters, we had about another 50,000 voters to add. Now we’re in the 80,000 to 90,000 range.

“My real excitement centered around another 100,000 Latinos who registered to vote since Donald Trump has been president,” he added.

According to Rocha, those 100,000 new voters were left untouched by other primary campaigns, since it’s common practice to only reach out to voters with a history of voting.

That has proven to be a flawed approach to attracting Hispanic voters, who are disproportionately younger. Nearly one million Hispanic voters come of age in the United States every year; presidential campaigns generally have not invested heavily in pursuing that demographic.

“I knew we had free rein to talk to a group of Latinos for a long period of time that nobody else would talk to,” wrote Rocha. “In the end, the universe of Latino voters in Nevada was 120,000, after beginning with only the 18,000 that had caucused.”

Sanders won the Nevada caucuses in February, taking more than 40 percent of the vote, and 24 convention delegates to former Vice President Joe Biden’s nine.

Rocha makes the case in “Tío Bernie” that campaigns, particularly Democratic ones, have been unnecessarily leaving voters on the table.

“Most campaigns never go after these Latinos. That’s the reason I wrote the book, to prove that when you do they will show up and in big numbers,” Rocha told The Hill.