国际英语新闻:Obama secures majority of Latino votes: polls

HOUSTON, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- Latino-Americans voted for President Barack Obama over Republican candidate Mitt Romney 71 percent to 27 percent in Tuesday's U.S. presidential election, according to an analysis of exit polls released Wednesday.

Obama's national vote share among Hispanic voters is the highest seen by a Democratic candidate since 1996, when President Bill Clinton won 72 percent, according to the analysis by the Pew Research Center, a U.S. think tank.

The analysis also finds that Latinos made up 10 percent of the electorate, as indicated by the national exit poll, up from 9 percent in 2008 and 8 percent in 2004.

The exit poll analysis also shows that non-white voters made up 28 percent of the nation's electorate, up from 26 percent in 2008, and that Hispanics made up a growing share of voters in three of the key battleground states: Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

Latinos are the country's largest minority group.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2011 there were 51.9 million Latinos in the United States, making up 16.7 percent of the nation's population.