Nor did Mr. Bush make the kind of impact he had hoped to on the state's big Hispanic electorate.

Mr. Bush made two major policy speeches here last fall and has already produced Spanish-language television commercials to woo the state's growing Hispanic electorate.

Random interviews in Miami on Friday demonstrated just how disparate the Hispanic electorate can be.

Documents the generational and other diversity of the Hispanic electorate and challenges myths about voter behavior.

"But every single candidacy will put a little more into the development of an Hispanic electorate."

The size of the Hispanic electorate nationwide is also growing rapidly, he said, from 2.9 million registered voters in 1980 to 4.6 million in 1988.

The Federal ruling said the actions discriminated against the largely black and Hispanic electorate because it would deny them the ability to pick their own district board.

"This immigrant Hispanic electorate by definition is low on the socioeconomic scale," he said.

Fundamentally, he said, the Hispanic electorate is a "working, lower-middle class kind of vote that's interested in the same economic issues as Democrats."

The Hispanic electorate is largely Democratic (63 percent), despite being conservative on social issues like abortion and homosexuality.