The 2000 presidential race was one of the closest and most controversial elections in the nation's history. Throughout the election, both parties courted the Latino vote and sought to win the majority of its votes using extensive campaigning in Spanish. The central thesis of Muted Voices is that despite the expectation that Latino population growth would result in Latino voters having a pivotal role in national electoral influence, they remained marginalized as they had in previous elections.

The book begins with an introductory chapter by Robert Y. Shapiro, who briefly reviews the study of Latinos and presidential contests since 1988 and highlights how contemporary electoral rules, political structure, and demographics of the Latino population have combined to limit the Latino vote. Coeditors Louis DeSipio and Rodolfo de la Garza contribute an overview to the 2000 election. They highlight that this was the first election in which both major national parties campaigned earnestly for Latino votes and both candidates campaigned using Spanish. This campaign heralded the coming of age of Latinos as a significant component of the electorate. Even though Latino voters were estimated to have increased 20% from 1996, the effects of demographics, weak outreach by the parties to nontraditional voters, and selective mobilization efforts by Latino organizations resulted in Latino voter turnout having a limited effect on the national elections.

Robert G. Marbut contributes a chapter on Republican Party outreach to the Latino community in the 2000 election. Governor George Bush's campaign recognized from the beginning the importance of the Hispanic vote and actively pursued it, unlike previous Republican presidential candidates. Built into the Bush campaign infrastructure and message was a welcoming approach that addressed issues of importance to Hispanics, and a disciplined advertising message focusing on Bush as an individual and de-emphasizing his Republican Party connection. The results of this more aggressive Hispanic outreach were mixed. While Bush increased his share of Hispanic voters, his estimated Latino vote total based on the average of national exit polls was only 33%.

Harry P. Pachon, Matt A. Barreto, and Frances Marquez examine Latino political fortunes in California and find that Latinos are no longer merely a large demographic group in the Golden State but are now an important political influence in statewide politics. Latino voting has increased in the 1990s and has become more partisan, in part because of conservative statewide ballot measures supported by the Republican Party. Also, Latino elected officials have achieved a critical mass in the state legislature due to term limits and geographic dispersion of the Latino population.

The eight state-level studies of Latino political involvement include states ranging from small to large in population, with a few states having played a decisive role in the Electoral College vote, while others were noncompetitive in both party's campaigns. New Mexico's Hispanos gave a substantial boost to Al Gore with 66% of their votes, while 58% of non-Hispanic whites backed Bush. Garcia notes that with a final count that enabled Gore to win the state by fewer than 500 votes, the effort to turn out Hispano voters, who represent 36% of the electorate, proved decisive.

Rodney Hero and Patricia Jaramillo report that in Colorado, Latinos did not play a key role in Bush's victory in the state, although they constitute a growing percentage of the population. Cohesive Latino voting was more evident in helping to defeat an antibilingual education measure and giving control of the state Senate to the Democrats. Arizona's growing Latino electorate totaled 15% in 2000; nevertheless, a controversial antibilingual education ballot did not produce the anticipated significant increase in Latino turnout. Manuel Avalos cautions that unless there are greater efforts to help Latino noncitizens become naturalized and turn out to vote, their voices will continue to be muted in the state.

According to Lisa J. Montoya, in Texas, both parties largely ignored Latinos because of Bush's presumed electoral victory. Without a serious challenge by the Democrats, Bush cruised to an easy victory and Latino votes were not seriously contested nor sufficiently mobilized. Still, it is estimated that Gore won more than 54% of Latino votes in the state. Luis Ricardo Fraga, Ricardo Ramirez, and Gary M. Segura argue that the rapid growth of Latino political clout in California has helped place the state out of reach to the GOP for statewide contests (the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 2003 recall election notwithstanding). They note that Latinos are the largest block of nonwhite voters in a state that is now majority nonwhite. With white voters tilting toward the Republicans, Latino voters help ensure Democratic dominance at the congressional and state legislative level. Angelo Falcon's chapter on New York State politics discusses the Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio race for the U.S. Senate and city-level politics in New York City to reveal how local politics provides the sustenance to sustain Latino electoral politics in America. Illinois Latinos were largely ignored again, according to DeSipio, as a Gore victory was highly anticipated from the outset because of strong Democratic Party strength.

In Florida, the controversy over a Cuban boy, Elián Gonzalez, found drifting at sea in November 1999 later erupted into a mobilization of the Cuban expatriot community against the Clinton administration's handling of the case. In the November 2000 election, in Miami Dade County, home to the majority of Cuban Americans in the state, 67% of Hispanics voted for Bush, including 75% of Cuban Americans. As Kevin A. Hill and Dario Moreno note, Cuban Americans are a critical part of the winning Republican electoral coalition in Florida, “representing only 8 percent of the state's electorate and practicing bloc voting” (p. 226).

The results of the research conducted by the authors in Muted Voices present a frustrating view of both parties' efforts to court Latino voters. Despite initial visible efforts at outreach and advertising, this outreach was reduced to a focus on small pockets of Latino voters in a few key states. The inescapable reality is that exploding Latino population growth has produced only limited national voting strength, and this will continue in the future until more Latinos become voters. Even then, the potential for a change in unified ethnic voting patterns may mitigate against cohesive Latino voting strength. The real growth in Latino political fortunes remains at the state and local level, where Latino population numbers and growing electoral strength have increased the number of seats held by Latinos in Congress and in state and local government. This area of research should be more fully explored and incorporated into future research. Also, the growing numbers of nonvoters cries out for further analysis than is addressed in this volume. What has been tried to increase the number of Latino voters and what were the results? Avalos explores the problem of nonvoting in Arizona, and it would be useful to track this problem across state lines. Meanwhile, until greater Latino voting power can be achieved, Latinos would do better to strengthen their influence in key states and to use this clout to influence national politics in strategic and opportune ways.