Organizations courting Latino voters ahead of Georgia Senate runoff races
ATLANTA - There's a push to get thousands of Latino Georgian voters to the polls.
Some political experts believe they could be key in determining the winners in next week's Senate races.
FOX 5 News spoke with one organization that has helped call, text, and knock on the door of thousands of potential Latino voters in recent weeks.
They said there is huge electoral power within the Latino voting bloc, even though they make up a smaller percentage of the state's voting population.
"One thing for me, and my generation in general, that's important is climate change because in the future that's gonna affect all of us," voter Claudia Gomez.
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Gomez, who is from Gwinnett County, voted for the first time in this year's presidential election.
"It was pretty exciting but also nerve-racking, there was so much at stake," she described.
According to election polling data, 3% of Georgia’s 5 million voters in November's Presidential Election were Latino.
That's not a large number.
However, given how close the Senate runoff races are, Tania Unzuete with the organization Mijente said that Latinos can help send a candidate over the finish line.
"It’s not the population leading the charge in this. The Latino population in the state right now is gonna give us a couple percentage points either way."
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According to political experts, Latino voter turnout in Georgia increased from 33% in the 2016 Presidential Election to 42% this year.
To continue building on that momentum, several organizations have spent the last seven weeks reaching out to potential voters.
"At the beginning of the runoff campaigns, there was definitely people who didn't understand what the runoff was, didn't understand why they needed to vote again, wanted to learn more about the candidates, or hadn't heard about the candidates," Unzuete said.
She went on to say that other challenges they've seen include the language barrier, people lacking voter resources, or living in rural communities.
Both Republicans and Democrats have targeted minority groups as they fight for control of the U.S. Senate.
"I think we want people to see that the Latino community shows up for elections that are important like this and we hope that this some of the means more attention on the issues we care about if the candidates do get elected," Unzuete explained.
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