What made Hillary so popular with Latinos?

[JG]

Considering how Hillary seemed to have outperformed Biden significantly with Latinos and also how she won Latinos in both the 2008 and 2016 primaries, what makes her so popular with them? I often read that Latinos tended to back establishment-based candidates, but that obviously doesn't hold up, considering Sanders did very well with them in 2020.

[SInNYC]

Hillary was not so popular with Latinos - most polls had her underperforming Obama12 by about 5 points, which is even worse considering it was against Trump.

Its just that Biden did even worse, though I would like to see data for Hispanics without Cubans and Venezuelans. Its been my impression that socialism isnt a bad word for most Mexicans, so RGV results are somewhat surprising. But maybe COVID is a more important issue there.

[Alben Barkley]

I have a few theories. Can't prove them, but take them for what they are worth:

1. In 2016, Trump's campaign was much more explicitly racist and much more explicitly focused on Latinos. Everything from the time he came down that escalator and called Mexicans "rapists" to the end was about immigration, the wall, etc. This time, the focus has been much more on COVID and the economy. Not strong spots for Trump either if you ask me, but maybe some minorities thought the last four years weren't as bad as they were expecting and even did OK for themselves financially. So between less focus on Trump's racism and not as bad experience with that racism as some of them might have expected, they were less inclined to oppose him strongly.

2. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that many Latinos were NOT huge fans of BLM, NOT fans of the whole "woke" thing in general with "Latinx," etc. To some, it seems to have come off as favoring black people over them, and/or supporting policies and ideas that don't fit with the largely socially conservative worldviews of many Latinos. To others, they might have just felt irked and pandered to with Democratic candidates using words and phrases that they do not use and find condescending. I remember cringing hard when Beto and Booker broke out into bad Spanish in the debates, and Warren said "Latinx." I imagine many Latinos thought that was ridiculous.

3. This applies mainly to Florida Latinos, Cubans and Venezuelans in particular, but it's worth mentioning: "Socialism" became more emphasized between 2016 and 2020 as Democrats made more and more concessions to Bernie and his wing of the party and stopped treating "socialism" as such a bad word. Trump and the GOP made hay with that, fear-mongering relentlessly by acting like that means that either Biden himself is a socialist or he's being secretly controlled by Bernie and his socialist comrades, and it seems to have paid off for them in Florida. The situation in Venezuela getting worse and Trump capitalizing on that didn't help us either.

On top of that, Hillary did not have as left-wing a platform, was not as friendly with Bernie as Biden, and her win over Bernie was seen as more of a firm repudiation of Bernie's wing even though she won by less, given how sharply divided the two remained all the way through. Bernie and Biden reconciling earlier and stronger was good for party unity, but may have hurt some in this specific regard.

4. Conversely, it seems Hispanics in other parts of the country actually liked Bernie more now and weren't big fans of Biden. Bernie did do a decent job of Latino outreach during his primary campaign, and it seemed to have worked in California, Nevada, Colorado, etc. Perhaps many of these voters were demoralized when he didn't get the nomination and had bought into the lines about Biden being no better than Trump, so they didn't bother to vote for him even if they didn't vote for Trump either. The swings in some of those rural Texas counties for example don't even require there be a large number of Clinton-Trump voters, just that a lot more turn out than typical, and it seems most of those broke for Trump. There's no denying there does not seem to have been great outreach to these areas on the part of the Biden campaign, which seems to have largely taken them for granted.

[BaldEagle1991]

Hillary was not so popular with Latinos - most polls had her underperforming Obama12 by about 5 points, which is even worse considering it was against Trump.

Its just that Biden did even worse, though I would like to see data for Hispanics without Cubans and Venezuelans. Its been my impression that socialism isnt a bad word for most Mexicans, so RGV results are somewhat surprising. But maybe COVID is a more important issue there.

High % of Hispanic Protestants is the main reason for the RGV swing in 2020 to Trump from HRC.

[Annatar]

She wasn't, she did worse than Obama with Hispanic voters.

[Sol]

Contrary to the points made in this thread, IIRC based on careful precinct analysis Hillary was determined to have done better than Obama 12 with Latinos.

[SevenEleven]

I often read that Latinos tended to back establishment-based candidates, but that obviously doesn't hold up, considering Sanders did very well with them in 2020.

Sanders did worse among Latinos than he did in 2016.

4. Conversely, it seems Hispanics in other parts of the country actually liked Bernie more now and weren't big fans of Biden. Bernie did do a decent job of Latino outreach during his primary campaign, and it seemed to have worked in California, Nevada, Colorado, etc.

You're right on with 1, 2, and 3. However, Bernie actually did worse in all the states you mentioned in 2020, when compared to 2016. The rest of point 4 was a really bad take so I simply chopped it out.

[Annatar]

Contrary to the points made in this thread, IIRC based on careful precinct analysis Hillary was determined to have done better than Obama 12 with Latinos.

That precinct level analysis done by Latino decisions has been debunked,

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-probably-did-better-with-latino-voters-than-romney-did/amp/

In the 6, 90% plus Hispanic counties her net margin was 6.4% worse than Obama.