ABSTRACT
With twenty-two electoral votes, Illinois is a major player in presidential politics. Home to more than nine hundred thousand Latinos, the fifth-largest Hispanic population in the United States, it holds the promise of significant Latino influence in municipal and state politics and under certain conditions in presidential elections. Although lacking the capacity to sway national- and state-level races regularly, Latinos were nonetheless able to exert some leverage. This chapter concentrates on Latino politics in the Chicago metropolitan area. Chicago provides a unique test of the potential for and the nature of intra-Hispanic alliances, which will be necessary for the maximum realization of Hispanic power at the national level. If their numbers offer the potential for political influence, the extent to which Illinois's Latinos are able to realize this potential is conditioned by their demographics. These demographic considerations determine the resources they bring to the electoral arena, the general characteristics of the electoral environment, and the peculiarities of specific races.
