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Hispanics cast 71 percent of their ballots Tuesday for President Barack Obama, according an analysis of exit polls by the Pew Hispanic Center. Republican challenger Mitt Romney lagged far behind, with a 27 percent take.

Obama won the biggest share of the Hispanic vote since Bill Clinton captured 72 percent in 1996.

The Washington, D.C.-based Pew Hispanic Center, an arm of the Pew Research Center, also said Latinos made up a growing share of the electorate in three battleground states — Florida,

I was sitting at a lunch counter on Monday, less than 24 hours before the polls opened, thinking about the one thing that was keeping me up most nights: on Election Day, would Latinos show up and translate our potential to political power?

Just then, I heard two voices—loud, vibrant, New Yorker accents belonging to a pair of strong women. One said:

“You voting?” And then the other, “Why? It’s the same old shit.”

I turned to see the voices and their speakers. Two 20-something Latinas, working beh

The holiday season is around the corner. Turkey motifs replace Halloween, and then -- POW! -- the all-out flurry of the ho-ho frenzy.

’Tis the season.

Did you know that Hispanics celebrate holidays beyond “traditional” American holidays?

Awareness and knowledge of connecting with Hispanic consumers provide valuable cultural insights and allow you to specifically engage this audience in more innovative and relevant ways.

Here are a few holidays, festivals and fiestas that are part of our culture:

Among the 10.9 million homes that went into foreclosure between 2007 and 2011, more than half of the “spillover” cost to nearby homes have led to a $1 trillion loss in home equity for African-American and Latino families., according to a new report by the Center for Responsible Lending titled, “Collateral Damage: The Spillover Costs of Foreclosures.”

The report said, “Families impacted in minority neighborhoods have lost or will lose on average, $37,084 or 13 percent of their home value.” By com

Betty Garcia embraces the term “immigrant entrepreneur” as a badge of pride.

She says her family hasn’t had it as easy as native-born Americans in turning Tortilleria Sonora, whose name hints at both the product and her family’s origins, into a successful business.

“It’s important to recognize backgrounds,” said Garcia, 37, who has helped her Mexican parents run the Des Moines shop for the last four years. “Not to put any other culture down, but Americans have it easier because they are more kno

A tax on soda would carry the greatest health benefits for black and Latino Californians, who face the highest risks of diabetes and heart disease, according to recent research findings.

The study found that if a penny-per-ounce tax was applied to soda, cuts in consumption would result in an 8 percent decline in diabetes cases among blacks and Latinos. The statewide reduction in new diabetes cases is projected at 3 to 5.6 percent, according to researchers from UC San Francisco, Columbia Universi

An organization that helps train and support female business owners in Iowa will start a program that aims to do the same for rural Hispanic entrepreneurs.

Iowans for Social and Economic Development received a $200,000 grant from an agency that supports efforts to reduce poverty and help people build sustainable lives. The grant, which will be handed out over the next two years, allows the agency to start Emprendedores Latinos de Iowa, a program that will roll out first in Muscatine and surround

The Adelante Tour is in Houston and the women driving the movement are on a mission.

Adelante Movement founder Nely Galan, author Sandra Cisneros and Nell Merlino, founder of the “Count Me In” nonprofit, are wrapping up the three day LATISM Conference with a free forum Saturday afternoon at the Hyatt Regency.

The Adelante Movement is about personal, economic and cultural empowerment. It may sound lofty, but this about more than words. It’s about action and inspiring Latinas with practical advice

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Univision and other Spanish language networks have long attributed their high ratings among Latinos to the fact that viewers watch their programming live.

But while many Latinos still flock to television sets to watch the network’s plot-heavy telenovelas, live sporting events and news, a growing segment of the population is also viewing media on mobile devices like smartphones, tablets and on mobile applications.

Figures from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project show that a

Spanish speaking Hispanic women in the United States are less likely to receive epidurals during childbirth, when compared to English speaking Latinas and non-Hispanic white women, and according to a new study from Northwestern University, language barriers may play a key role in the pain management disparity. This is just one more health disparity observed among the Hispanic population in the U.S.

“Our study was the first to evaluate disparities among English and Spanish-speaking Hispanic women

Since the beginning of the debates, the election has taken on a bit of a “tortoise and the hare” feel. Many of us tuned in to the first debate expecting to see Obama beating Romney by leaps and bounds, wooing voters with the superior intellect and charisma that won him the 2008 election. Instead, both conservatives and liberals agree he “phoned it in,” looking as if staying awake was all the effort he could muster.

This week Obama again displayed a startlingly hare-like degree of overconfidence

Early this year, President Barack Obama selected Telemundo Denver for a one-on-one interview. In September, he selected Univision Colorado. During the summer, the president gave Denver’s KBNO a 15-minute live interview.

The last time I counted, Mitt Romney's campaign had at least 15 Spanish-language videos on its YouTube page, and had commissioned Craig Romney as surrogate bilingual speaker for his father to the Hispanic community and Spanish-language media outlets.

Late in September, both presi

Hispanic Professionals of Greater Milwaukee (HPGM), an organization committed to supporting Hispanic professionals, named Ms. Griselda Aldrete, the new Executive Director of HPGM.

Aldrete joins HPGM with a strong background in nonprofit administration, events and sponsorship, and developmental programs. Her background includes work in the private and public sectors. Most recently, she served as the Program Manager for HPGM. Prior to joining HPGM, she served as interim Executive Director for the

Unemployment for Latinos remains stubbornly high, but Hispanics are expressing confidence in the economy by dropping more money -- on beer.

Beer sales tanked after the 2008 economic crisis. The industry is still in a rut, growing just 2 percent last year, after shrinking the year before.

But brewers have seen sales of imported beers in the United States spike by 6.5 percent this year, according to The Financial Times. Latinos drink more imported beer than any other group, according to marketing

Here's a mystery.

According to the 2010 Census, of the 308.7 million people in the United States, 16% are of Hispanic or Latino origin. Hispanics accounted for 29% of the population in the West.

Hispanic spending power was estimated at $1.2 trillion last year by HispanTelligence, and by the end of this year, Hispanic spending power is expected to be more than 15% of total spending for the entire U.S. -- not including undocumented immigrants, according to the International Franchise Association.

When an executive producer for Sofia the First: Once Upon a Princess said that Sofia is Disney’s first Latina princess, he was, unbeknownst to him, setting in motion a multi-layered discussion on Latina identity, what constitutes “Latina looks” and a crush of celebration and criticism.

As the story took on a life of its own, Disney felt they had to come out with a statement clarifying what their make-believe princess is — and isn’t. The end result is that Sofia is not actually Latina.

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Latinos in higher education; we’re finally making it happen. The image that comes to mind is of Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver, grinning from ear to ear, fist-pumping with one arm in the air. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos are now, for the first time, the largest minority group among the nation’s four-year college and university students. And for the first time, Hispanics also made up one-quarter (25.2%) of all 18 to 24-year-old students enrolled in two-year colleges.

Cer

As our country celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, it’s not difficult to find areas where this nation continues to benefit from the significant contributions of the Hispanic immigrants who’ve come to our shores.

Just last week, Americans witnessed Venezuelan-born Miguel Cabrera capture baseball’s Triple Crown, becoming only the 15th Major League Baseball player to ever do so. A few days later, President Obama dedicated the Cesar E. Chavez National Memorial, honoring the Mexican-American labor le

America’s Latinos are among the most active users of mobile communications among all demographic groups in the United States, according to the report, "Hispanic Broadband Access: Making the Most of the Mobile, Connected Future" [PDF]. In fact, the report by the Hispanic Institute and Mobile Future revealed that 50.5 million Hispanics living in the U.S. today are increasingly turning primarily to mobile broadband, rather than using wired connections as their main avenue to the Internet.

As presid