Hispanic voters prefer U.S. President Barack Obama over his Republican challenger Mitt Romney by 69 percent to 21 percent, according to a new nationwide survey released Thursday.

The survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, an American think tank, shows that Obama's current lead over Romney among Hispanics has barely budged throughout the 2012 campaign and is larger than in the 2008 election, when he received 67 percent of the Hispanic vote to 31 percent over Republican John McCain.

Since the last presidential election, the Latino electorate in the country has grown in size and importance, the survey says.

Today, 23.7 million Hispanics are eligible to vote, an increase of more than 4 million since 2008. Hispanics now account for a record 11 percent of the nation's eligible electorate, up from 9.5 percent in 2008.

The new survey also finds a sharp rise in the past year in the share of Latinos who identify the Democratic Party as the one that has more concern for them.

With the turnout rate of eligible Latino voters historically lagging that of other groups, the new survey finds that 77 percent of Latino voters say they will vote this year. By comparison, 89 percent of all registered voters say they will vote.