The Hispanic vote is again a big topic this year. And each week there is another big announcement with potential electoral implications. For example, this week Telemundo and mun2, both properties of NBC-Universal, announced a terrific nationwide Hispanic voter registration effort that we hope will become a success story. Here is an excerpt from the announcement:

The mission of "Vota Por Tu Futuro" - "Vote 4 UR Future" is to increase the number of Hispanic voters by educating, registering and inspiring Hispanics to exercise their power and voice through voting in the upcoming 2008 presidential election. In a strategic approach to reach U.S. Hispanics, Telemundo and mun2 will embark in a first-ever media driven campaign to implement a multi-platform initiative through broadcast, cable and the Internet. Through its cable network, mun2, "Vote 4 UR Future" will focus on motivating and mobilizing young Latinos in the U.S., who constitute the fastest-growing segment within the Nation’s Hispanic community.

The conventional wisdom among political reporters seems to be that Hillary Clinton is not only the Democratic front-runner, but has nearly secured the nomination. So it’s no surprise that Agence France Presse published a very positive piece last week on the Clinton campaign’s Hispanic outreach efforts. Here is a little excerpt:

Since launching her campaign, the New York senator and wife of ex-president Bill Clinton has methodically targetted Latino voters for support, not missing any large meeting of members of the nearly 50 million-strong Hispanic population, the biggest and fastest-growing US minority.

She has gone out of her way to appear on Spanish-language television, taken part in a debate on the massive Univision network and met Latino lawmakers.

This past Sunday, the San Antonio Express-News published a lengthy article about Hispanic voters in Florida. It’s part of a series the paper is doing on Hispanic voters that we’ll continue to share with you. Here is one excerpt:

For decades, Cuban Americans have had enormous political clout, and that is still the case — they control nearly all aspects of local, county and regional government in South Florida, and have sent a handful of Cuban Americans, all Republican, to Congress.

But earlier this decade, they lost their status as the majority Hispanic group in the state with the arrival of large numbers of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombians and Venezuelans.

Between 1990 and 2006, the Hispanic vote in Florida went from being 80 percent Cuban to about 45 percent, according to Sergio Bendixen, a Democratic Party pollster. At the beginning of the 1990s, Cubans in Florida accounted for half of all Hispanics living in the state. By the end of the decade, that figure had dropped to 31 percent.

Do you think Hillary Clinton will win the Hispanic vote contest in the Democratic primaries/caucuses?

In related news... amNewYork the daily free paper in Manhattan reports today on Hispanic voters and their rising political clout in New York.

With 2.2 million Hispanics in the city and counting, Latino voters are increasingly exerting their influence over city politics.