The Latino Vote in the 2004 Election

In presidential elections over the last several decades, observers have noticed two patterns involving Latinos. The first, according to DeSipio and de la Garza (2002, 398), is that “With each presidential election, the media and the punditocracy discover Latinos anew.” As Jorge Ramos (2004) pointed out, “Without fail every four years, many politicians in the United States rediscover Latinos, only to forget them all over again for the next three years…It is a phenomenon so predictable that I have dubbed it the ‘Christopher Columbus Syndrome.”’