Young Latino Voters on the Rise

"When I travel cross-country and go to conferences to talk to young people, I tell them: 'Don't forget. Yes, you are Cuban, Mexican or Peruvian, but don't forget you're also American.' They get off their seats and start clapping. No one is recognizing their Americanness, and that's what these kids desperately want to demonstrate," Petersen said.

Voto Latino is trying to reach young voters through the Web and text messages to get them to the polls. About 78 percent of English-dominant Latinos are online, Pew Hispanic reported last year. The study also found that about 49 percent of Latino cell phone users send and receive text messages.

The group plans to text get-out-the-vote messages to young Hispanics.

It also produced a Web-based mock "telenovela," or soap opera, in English with Declare Yourself, another youth get-out-the-vote group. The telenovela stars actors Wilmer Valderrama, from "That '70s Show," movie actress Rosario Dawson, Tony Plana of "Ugly Betty" and others.

"If they are Latino, they think it's funny. It cracks them up. The folks that aren't Latino said, 'I don't get it.' We definitely hit a cultural midsection," Petersen said.

Some young Latinos, like Raul Delgado, 26, who voted in California's Feb. 5 primary for Clinton, don't have to be persuaded to vote. The longshoreman and former Marine said his family's tradition of voting and discussing politics at their many get-togethers led him to register soon after turning 18.

"Growing up, you hear how important it is to get your vote in," said Delgado, whose father immigrated from Mexico as a teenager. "Hopefully it will make you be heard."

In Texas, Obama has won the coveted endorsement of the Mexican American Democrats and held rallies at several universities. Clinton has been campaigning primarily along the Texas-Mexico border, including on the campuses of the University of Texas-Brownsville and UT-Pan American.

Republicans also go to the polls March 4 in Texas. GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain held a town hall meeting at a military-related site in San Antonio on Wednesday.

In that heavily Hispanic city, Anna Urrabazo, 28, is undecided in 2008 but voted for President Bush in 2004. The daughter of U.S.-born Latinos, she said Spanish-language campaigning "doesn't pick up on my vote."