The midterm elections showed how both parties need to court Hispanic voters and address issues that matter to them, according to several immigration groups.
Stephen Fotopulos, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said that in some races, even a couple thousand votes can make a difference.
"If there's anything we've learned from the last several election cycles, it's that very important races turn on very few votes and so 2 percent of the electorate, a couple of thousand people, in a House district, will determine who wins," he said.
"New American voters are at this critical nexus where, in the next several cycles, their votes will determine elections," he added.
Hispanics are 11.6 million, or 7.9 percent, of all registered voters in the U.S. at last count. But they continue to grow as an essential voting bloc in winning presidential elections, the Immigration Policy Institute reported.
In Tennessee and Georgia, although the share of Hispanic voters is growing, the total remains relatively small.
In 2008, Tennessee had 58,000 eligible Hispanic voters, but they comprised only 1.3 percent of eligible voters. In Georgia, there were 178,000, but they were only 2.7 percent of all eligible voters.
Delores Vinson, chairwoman of the Hamilton County Republican Party, said it's critical that the GOP keep reaching out to Hispanics.
While there are groups such as the Republican National Hispanic Assembly at the national level, there's still a lot of work to do in Hamilton County, she said.
"Locally, we don't do enough," she said. "We have been woefully inadequate in recruiting people to our membership, not that we don't welcome them, of course, but I don't think we have made it our priority as we should have."
Chairman Jeff Brown said the Hamilton County Democratic Party has also been discussing how to reach out to the Hispanic community.
"It's entirely likely that, in my own lifetime, our entire American culture will become much more Hispanic and I think anyone that doesn't try to be more inclusive is just being foolish," he said.
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