Trendspotting: Latino Voters Are Up for Grabs

NewsWire: 4/1/21

• Since 2016, support for Republicans has increased among Latinos, particularly Latino men. In interviews, many say that their top issue when voting is economic stability and that they support lower taxes and fewer regulations. (The New York Times)
• NH: Most Latino voters went for Biden in the 2020 presidential race. An analysis from UCLA found that in the majority of counties with large Latino populations, Latinos voted for Biden over Trump by a nearly 3 to 1 margin.
• But Republicans did register gains among Latino voters. According to exit polls, 32% of Latino men voted for Trump in 2016 and 36% voted for him in 2020. Among Latinos overall, Trump improved from 29% to 32%. These voters helped win Republicans several House seats, particularly in the battleground states of Florida and Texas. In Florida’s Miami-Dade County and Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, which have long been considered Democratic strongholds, Biden won by far slimmer margins than Clinton did in 2016.

• The erosion of support has dismayed Democrat leaders, who often assume that the more Latinos vote, the more likely they are to win. But clearly they shouldn't be taking Latinos for granted.
• There has always been a contingent of Latinos who have backed the GOP--anywhere from 25% to 45% of all Latino voters. And during a year marked by protests and the pandemic, Republicans’ focus on reopening the economy and “law and order” messaging resonated with many of them. Latinos are the fastest-growing group of small-business owners in the U.S. and make up nearly a quarter of federal law-enforcement personnel (including 40% of the Border Patrol).
• As the two parties become megabrands increasingly defined by their social-issue stands, Hispanics pose a special challenge for Democrats because they are significantly more conservative than white Democrats on most social issues (like family, religion, abortion, and gender roles). 51% of Hispanics say abortion should be illegal "all/most of the time," for example, while only 41% of all Americans say the same thing. One of Trump's strengths was that, along with most Americans, he opposes "making America more politically correct." Hispanics, revealingly, are actually slightly more likely than whites to "oppose" more political correctness (59% versus 56%). (See "Trump's Favorability Rises Among Hispanics.")
• In this NYT piece, Latino men offer various other reasons why they favor Republicans, including their desire for low taxes, their anti-abortion views, and their association of Democrats with socialism and communism. In an interview with NPR, Northwestern history professor Geraldo Cadava noted that “there’s a real diversity of political beliefs” among Latinos according to their country of origin, gender, religion, age, and how long they’ve lived in the U.S. The GOP also has a long history of Latino outreach that benefited them hugely on the ground in Florida and Texas.
• What are some of these differences? For one, Latinos who have been in the U.S. for three generations or more are more likely to vote Republican than foreign-born and second-generation Latinos, who favor Democrats. Those who emigrated from left-leaning countries tend to vote Republican, while those who emigrated from countries with right-leaning governments tend to vote Democrat. Latino Catholics and Protestants favored Biden by large margins, but a narrow majority of Latino evangelicals (whose number is rapidly growing) went for Trump.
• Many Democrats assumed that Trump’s rabid rhetoric on immigration was bound to turn off Latino voters. Yet polls show that it didn't have much impact. Immigration actually isn’t a high priority for Latinos, or at least it wasn’t in 2020. Latino voters’ top three priorities for the next president matched those of the rest of the country: Covid-19, health care, and the economy. Immigration ranked sixth.
• In considering the priorities of Latino voters, it’s worth highlighting here a quote from GOP strategist Mike Madrid: “Paying rent is more important than fighting social injustice in their minds.” As the Democratic Party has drifted further to the left, it’s solidified its hold on suburbia and more educated Americans. But its chances of capturing battleground states will keep dwindling unless it can win back some of the Latino voters who have gone GOP.