While the council voting figure is not particularly high, it does suggest the electorate rates local government as a more important driver of democratic participation than the EU.
Candidates may also fear alienating Latino voters, an increasingly large part of the electorate, who rate immigration reform among their top issues.
While opponents of immigration reform often try to play down the importance of the issue to the Latino community, arguing that the Hispanic electorate often rates having a job or health care as more important issues, the Latino Decisions poll highlighted how personal the controversy over immigration is for many Hispanics.
Voter-registration efforts were not as crucial; Hispanics, who are 47 percent of the state's population, make up nearly 40 percent of its electorate, the highest rate in the country.
Will a fickle and disgruntled electorate, whose abstention rate last weekend was a record 40%, once again put a spanner in the political works, if not by their votes (Mr Chirac is unlikely to repeat the error of calling an early election), then at least by their strikes and demonstrations?
Based upon the most recent Bloomberg Politics poll, he is viewed unfavorably by 68% of the national electorate, against favorable rating of 29%.
While the European economy may be deteriorating at an alarming rate, the electorate here is still enamored of her as the Iron Chancellor, advocating the austerity policies that are rapidly falling into disfavor elsewhere, among economists as well as the public.
The change is a reflection, experts say, of 15 years of declining crime rates, an electorate less anxious about public safety and the fact that crime and law enforcement issues are less partisan than they used to be.
But with the wrenching unemployment rate, an angry electorate and the coming corruption trial of Rod R. Blagojevich, the former Democratic governor, this is no ordinary year.
The share of the Asian American and Latino electorate grew by the same rate between 2008 and 2012--about 2012--about 2012--about onehe increasingly important role that both Latinos and Asian Americans play in national elections.
