LOS ANGELES - Immigration protests that brought hundreds of thousands of marchers into the nation's streets this spring promised a potent political legacy -- a surge of new Latino voters. "Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote," they vowed.
But an Associated Press review of voter registration figures from Chicago, Denver, Houston, Atlanta and other major urban areas that saw large rallies shows no sign of a historic new voter boom that could sway elections.
Even in Los Angeles, where a 500,000-strong protest in March foreshadowed demonstrations across the United States, an increase in new registrations before the June primary was more trickle than torrent in a county of nearly 4 million voters.
Protest organizers -- principally unions, Latino advocacy groups and the Catholic Church -- acknowledge that it has been hard to translate street activism into ballot box clout, though they insist their goal of 1 million new voters by 2008 is reachable.
It's impossible to count exactly how many new registrants were inspired by the new movement because counties typically do not ask race or ethnicity. But while new registrations were higher this year than last -- not surprising since Democrats and Republicans are struggling for control of Congress -- the numbers are well below those from 2004 and do not indicate the watershed awakening that advocates had envisioned.
"I was anticipating a huge jump in registration -- I didn't see it," said Jess Cervantes, a veteran California political operative whose company analyzes Latino voting trends. "When you have an emotional response, it takes time to evolve."
The emotional response was a reaction to federal legislation that would have overhauled current immigration policy, including the criminalization of the estimated 11 million immigrants who are here illegally. While that legislation is effectively dead this year, immigration remains a campaign issue.
And Latino voters remain a pivotal voting bloc, especially with their numbers projected to grow significantly in coming decades. Both political parties would like to capture the Latino vote in the same way Democrats have maintained overwhelming support among black voters.
Latinos have long voted in numbers far below their share of the population, in part because many are younger than 18 or are not U.S. citizens. A study by the Pew Hispanic Center found that while Latinos accounted for half the nation's population growth between the 2000 and 2004 elections, they represented only one-tenth of the increase in votes cast.
A lack of political experience helps explain why the flow of new registrations has been halting. Some activists acknowledge that their groups have yet to master the nuances of voter registration drives -- a typically face-to-face task more complex than mobilizing a march. Others complain that political parties with the most to gain haven't financed registration efforts.
"Until the money is spent, 'Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote' will always just be a slogan," said Nativo Lopez, president of the California-based Mexican-American Political Association. "A million new registrations would cost about $10 million. Is anybody willing to pay that? I haven't seen it."
What's more, no galvanizing leader of the immigrant-rights movement has emerged and the largest pool of potential voters -- young people -- tend to be the hardest to reach.
"It's a hard sell," said Avelino Andazola, a field organizer with the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project who rounded up only a dozen new registrations at a spring immigration rally attended by several thousand in southern Los Angeles County.
For this story, the AP reviewed new registration numbers in metropolitan areas over several years. The areas included Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose; Chicago; Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz.; Dallas and Houston; Atlanta; Denver; and Jacksonville and St. Petersburg, Fla. The time frames included both January-through-July periods dating to 2004, as well as periods before statewide elections, when registration efforts are most intense.
The data provide a wide-angle look at new registrations, but they do have limitations. Any significant shift in registrations overall would stand out, but voters are not specifically identified by race or ethnicity. As a result, an increase in new registrations in Los Angeles County in the 100 days before this June's primary compared to the months before two prior statewide elections cannot be attributed exclusively to new Latino voters, despite extensive registration efforts.
Gains in new registrations were highest in 2004, when political parties spent lavishly to enroll new voters ahead of the presidential election.
New voter registrations increased in virtually every city between 2005 and 2006 -- but that would be expected because of congressional primaries and elections. The 2006 numbers were below the 2004 numbers in every city, often significantly.
In Harris County, Texas, home to Houston, new registrations through July tallied 55,657 -- an increase of 16 percent over 2005 but well below the 71,402 from 2004.
Dallas County showed more potential in attaining significant new voter registrations for 2006. Its new voter registrations totaled 35,590 through Aug. 15. With less than half of this year left, the figure was only 4,775 shy of the number of new voters who registered in 2004, a presidential election year. Last year, Dallas and the surrounding cities in the county had 27,321 new voters register.
Like in other cities around the country, Latino demographics still pose a challenge in getting to the polls. More than a third of Latinos in the city of Dallas are too young to vote, and out of those remaining, more than half aren't citizens, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
To increase the number of registered voters in the area, elected officials have volunteered at citizenship workshops while Latino advocates have held voter registration drives.
In rare cases, registrations declined. New registrations in San Francisco were significantly lower in the 100 days before this year's June 6 primary than over the same period before a statewide special election in November 2005.
In Chicago and surrounding Cook County, registrations in the first seven months this year jumped about a third over 2005, but were far below the same period in 2004.
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, a leading citizenship and registration drive organizer, has 18 full-time field organizers registering Chicago area voters.
The group's director, Joshua Hoyt, predicted that the impact of such efforts would be apparent by 2008, the next presidential election.
"It's like a good, old-fashioned Chicago precinct operation," Hoyt said. "The only difference is that our candidate is comprehensive immigration reform." Associated Press writers Giovanna Dell'Orto in Atlanta, Nathaniel Hernandez in Chicago, Anabelle Garay in Dallas, Steve Paulson in Denver, Juan Lozano in Houston, Phil Davis in Tampa, Fla., and Arthur H. Rotstein in Tucson contributed to this story.