Union canvasses Latinos for Obama vote After ringing the bell of the house he is canvassing, Santiago Quintero usually waits for a minute or two before knocking gently on the door. If no one answers, the heavy-set kitchen worker and union shop steward goes down his address list and trudges off to the next stucco-fronted, Spanish-style house. Mr Quintero is among hundreds of volunteers canvassing for the Culinary Workers Union, the largest union in Nevada with 55,000 members working in the state's vast casino and tourism industry. This is no random operation: the CWU has co-ordinated with other labour groups to produce a comprehensive list of union households for Mr Quintero and his colleagues to canvass. He has to visit as many as he can before the day is out. Most of the families he is visiting today are Latino. Si? Perfecto," he says, making a note on his clipboard after one Spanish-speaking man says he will vote for Barack Obama in November. Nevada is among the battleground states being fiercely contested by Mr Obama and Mitt Romney, his Republican opponent. But it is also a state with a booming Latino population and Latino voters are, according to polls, leaning heavily towards the president. Mr Obama has a slight lead over Mr Romney in Nevada - about one or two points, according to the latest polls. But national surveys of Latino voters have the president leading by as many as 40 points. The number of Latino voters across the US exploded in 2008, tilting the balance for Mr Obama in Nevada and other states, such as North Carolina and Florida. Latinos cast 9.7m votes in 2008, according to the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a Latino civil rights and advocacy group: it is projecting a 25 per cent increase this year, when it expects more than 12m Latinos to cast votes. The number could be higher if all Latinos of eligible age were registered to vote. Even though there are almost 24m eligible Latinos over the age of 18 in the US, turnout in the community has traditionally been low. This tends to change once Latinos are registered, says Clarissa Martinez, director of civic engagement for NCLR. Then they have pretty good rates of participation. They tend to be above 80 per cent when registered. This explains the push by unions such as the CWU and non-partisan groups such as NCLR and Voto Latino to bolster Latino turnout on election day. NCLR has registered 90,000 new voters in time for this year's election with 55,000 in Florida alone and the rest in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Colorado. "There's a gap to close and the challenge is more registrations," says Ms Martinez. The more we increase this electorate the more both camps will have to compete for its support. Mr Romney is back in contention in Nevada following his performance in the first debate. But the combination of a unionised workforce and a rising Latino population will work in Mr Obama's favour in the state, says John Tuman, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "You have lots of Latinos in unions or living in union households and that tends to boost turnout," he says. Enthusiasm among prospective Latino voters has also increased since June, he adds, when Mr Obama announced an executive order granting a reprieve to young undocumented immigrants facing deportation. What the Obama campaign was able to do [in Nevada] and also nationally was make immigration into an issue again. Growth of the Latino population in swing states such as Nevada and Florida would appear to favour Mr Obama. But some express caution. "I'm optimistic the Latino community will turn out but I'm cautious about who is going to win [the election]," says Maria Teresa Kumar, executive director of Voto Latino, which campaigns for immigrant rights and runs voter registration drives. We have to make sure people aren't turned away at the polls. Several states - including Georgia, Indiana, Kansas and Tennessee - have passed new laws which require prospective voters to present photo identification when they vote. There is concern among some Latinos that these laws could deter legal voters from casting their ballot in November - and anxiety that many likely voters will have dropped off the voter registration lists after losing their homes because of the mortgage foreclosure crisis. "Millions of people in the Latino community lost their homes and have to get re-registered and may not know it," says Ms Kumar. Still, the Latino population is still on track to deliver a hefty increase in its share of the vote across the US. In Nevada, the Latino community is facing a barrage of advertising from the Obama and Romney campaigns. But on the doorstep, the state's biggest union is making its presence felt. There was little doubt which candidate the CWU would support. The union, which represents workers ranging from cooks and housekeepers to bar staff and hotel maids, will next year negotiate a new employment contract that will affect all of its members: a win for Mitt Romney would threaten those negotiations, says Yvanna Cancela, the political director of the CWU's Local 226 Nevada affiliate. Mitt Romney has attacked the core tenets of the labour movement. If we don't stick together the middle class will die, which is why we are fighting so hard for Barack Obama. Later, Ms Cancela addresses a hall full of red-shirted volunteers such as Mr Quintero, who are poring over precinct maps and planning their canvassing routes. She tells them enthusiasm and urgency are key. People [on the doorstep] are going to give us every excuse under the sun not to vote. But if we sit back and say: OK, then we lose. We have to go out there and kick some real butt.