By Reid Wilson @ TheHill.com, July 16

Inaccurate headline but a very interesting piece with several sophisticated points of analyis as regards "urbanization" in Neveda and 7 other western states; excerpts:

[....] Where the Hispanic immigrant community once segmented itself by country of origin, creating distinctly Mexican or Honduran or Guatemalan populations, the younger generation sees itself as more generally Hispanic and less specifically tied to ancestral homelands.

Those younger Hispanic voters grew up during, and were deeply influenced by, years of debate over reforming the nation’s immigration system. While advisers to Bush understood the importance of reaching out to Hispanic voters — Bush won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004 — conservatives in Congress blocked his second-term push for immigration reform.

The “immigration [reform debate] has created a pan-Latino identity. You started to see that during the Bush years,” Damore said.

[.....]But ousting an incumbent is no mean feat, and while Heller faces a daunting demographic challenge, Democrats have their own political hurdles to climb: The voters Democrats most need to turn out, those Hispanics in Las Vegas, are disproportionately unlikely to vote. “It has been a challenge to get these folks not only to assimilate, but getting them to the polls,” Kihuen said of Hispanic voters moving into the state. “We’ve come a long way, but it has not been something that happened from one day to the next.” [....]