Latino Voters Moved Toward Republicans. Now Biden Wants Them Back.

[pppolitics]

[...]

For years, Latino activists and organizers complained that Democratic efforts to woo their community often seemed like an afterthought, a motley collection of Spanish-language advertisements, haphazardly translated campaign literature and a handful of outreach staff members tacked on to campaigns.

But after last year’s election, when Republicans peeled away significant amounts of Latino support across the country, Democratic leaders are trying a more aggressive approach.

Led by a White House that recruited top Latino organizers to high-level staff positions, and with the first lady, Jill Biden, taking a particular interest in reaching out to Latino voters, the new effort bridges the party, encompassing policy, communications and political organizing.  The outreach encompasses a broad number of community leaders and social media stars, such as Eugenio Derbez, a Mexican comedian, and meetings with Hispanic faith leaders.

The efforts reflect how vital Latino voters are to the party’s success, but also the extent of the work needed to win back a group that makes up nearly 20 percent of the population. Democrats have long viewed these voters — a diverse group that includes dozens of countries of origin and a wide range of socioeconomic status — as a mostly monolithic bloc that could be taken for granted, operating as though the most important factor was simply turnout; if Latino voters cast ballots, the reasoning went, they will vote Democratic

[...]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/us/politics/latino-voters-biden-democrats.html

[Biden his time]

Well, it sure doesn't feel like it considering the administration's lukewarm and negligent stances on Cuba, Venezuela, and fixing the broken immigration system. I'll believe Biden considers them a priority when I see it!

They invest, they have unlimited reserves of money, they have these golden opportunities literally every few weeks, but they (painfully) blow them all and are so out-of-touch it's all useless! At least this is the case in Greater Miami.

An example right now being the Cuban protests here. The energy is palpable and you can't take a drive around here without passing by groups of people on the sidewalks shouting slogans. Cuban flags have become a staple on the road! I don't even live in the Cuban-American heartland of Miami-Dade and I'm seeing this stuff. The Democrats have the perfect opportunity to capitalize (or at least show sympathy!), but nooo...

Nothing's happening, and frustratingly there are certain people who want to give the Cuban regime praise on our side!

Maybe it's different in other parts of the country (I noticed very little mention of Florida's Hispanic population in the article, which is the third-largest in the nation and one of the fastest-growing) but there's a lot of work that remains to be done here if they want to rebuild from their collapse over the last few years.


By the way, anybody who wants to get past the paywall? Click this.

[THG]

This demographic trended Republican in a blue wave year-2018, that is.

To be frank, I view Republican gains with Latinos as them either:

1) Assimilating into a culture that isn’t vastly different from WWC culture- the current #1 demographic of this Republican Party (look the the RGV, or places similar to that).

2) An increased amount of Hispanics in America are from socialist regimes, which the Biden administration is not doing a satisfactory job at countering. In fact, Cubans are protesting outside the White House for Biden’s inaction on this very issue...

And I don’t think the current Democratic party is returning to 2012 margins with this demographic due to those- and other factors, such as their tone deaf outreach efforts (Latinx??)

Hot take, I know. But expect this to go as well as Trump’s attempts to win back suburban women. In fact, it’ll probably backfire even more severely.

[DrScholl]

I can't stress enough how probable it is that the stimulus checks gave Trump an artificial boost with Latino voters. There was an article where some voters said that Trump's name on the check was interpreted as him sending the money.

[Hope For A New Era]

There was an article where some voters said that Trump's name on the check was interpreted as him sending the money.

As terrible of a person as he is, you can't deny that his political instincts are absolutely unmatched. There's a reason he won in 2016, and there's a reason he almost won in 2020.

[wbrocks67]

I can't stress enough how probable it is that the stimulus checks gave Trump an artificial boost with Latino voters. There was an article where some voters said that Trump's name on the check was interpreted as him sending the money.

Not to mention, historically, incumbent presidents have always gotten a boost with Latinos as well.

[THG]

I can't stress enough how probable it is that the stimulus checks gave Trump an artificial boost with Latino voters. There was an article where some voters said that Trump's name on the check was interpreted as him sending the money.

Not to mention, historically, incumbent presidents have always gotten a boost with Latinos as well.

In most if not all cases, they didn’t increase their margins by nearly 20 points.

Muh stimulus and incumbency doesn’t explain this shift.

[OSR stands with Israel]

I can't stress enough how probable it is that the stimulus checks gave Trump an artificial boost with Latino voters. There was an article where some voters said that Trump's name on the check was interpreted as him sending the money.

Not to mention, historically, incumbent presidents have always gotten a boost with Latinos as well.

If Kerry won in 2004 , McCain probably gets 48 or 49 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008. A lot of the so called incumbent bump comes from the fact that Dole , Romney and Biden were really bad Fits for Hispanic voters and George W Bush was an excellent fit (he did 14 points better with them in 2000 than Dole did than another 9 points better in 2004).


Also trends that tend to go  against you in the election that you won the White House in get usually even worse for that party in the years they are in the White House (think coastal suburban areas under W , Appalachia and the Upper south under Obama and Sunbelt suburbs under trump )

[wbrocks67]

I can't stress enough how probable it is that the stimulus checks gave Trump an artificial boost with Latino voters. There was an article where some voters said that Trump's name on the check was interpreted as him sending the money.

Not to mention, historically, incumbent presidents have always gotten a boost with Latinos as well.

In most if not all cases, they didn’t increase their margins by nearly 20 points.

Muh stimulus and incumbency doesn’t explain this shift.

The margin increased by like 10%.

[THG]

I can't stress enough how probable it is that the stimulus checks gave Trump an artificial boost with Latino voters. There was an article where some voters said that Trump's name on the check was interpreted as him sending the money.

Not to mention, historically, incumbent presidents have always gotten a boost with Latinos as well.

If Kerry won in 2004 , McCain probably gets 48 or 49 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008. A lot of the so called incumbent bump comes from the fact that Dole , Romney and Biden were really bad Fits for Hispanic voters and George W Bush was an excellent fit (he did 14 points better with them in 2000 than Dole did than another 9 points better in 2004).


Also trends that tend to go  against you in the election that you won the White House in get usually even worse for that party in the years they are in the White House (think coastal suburban areas under W , Appalachia and the Upper south under Obama and Sunbelt suburbs under trump )

Trump was probably not a great fit for Hispanic voters either, or atleast was seen as a terrible fit for them pre-2020. The reason why they swung Republican is not simply because of Biden being a poor fit for that demographic, but long term trends.

Similar to why the suburbs swung Democratic under Trump- it ain’t simply Trump being a bad fit for that demographic. And like you pointed out, I do not expect that trend to reverse in 2024- hell, even 2016 Trump improved among Romney’s 2012 efforts to win over Hispanics.

[THG]

I can't stress enough how probable it is that the stimulus checks gave Trump an artificial boost with Latino voters. There was an article where some voters said that Trump's name on the check was interpreted as him sending the money.

Not to mention, historically, incumbent presidents have always gotten a boost with Latinos as well.

In most if not all cases, they didn’t increase their margins by nearly 20 points.

Muh stimulus and incumbency doesn’t explain this shift.

The margin increased by like 10%.

According to PewResearch (one of the more reliable sources when it comes to this stuff) Hispanics went from being 26% GOP in 2012, 28% GOP in 2016- to around 38% GOP in 2020. That’s not that dissimilar to 2004 Bush margins.

Also, winning a demographic by 40 points to only winning them by 20 points is a 20 point swing. That is what I meant.

[DrScholl]

Exit polling showed Trump getting only 32% of the Hispanic vote. If he got 38% the results would have looked very different. Texas wouldn't have been as close and he would have carried Arizona with such numbers.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Exit polling showed Trump getting only 32% of the Hispanic vote. If he got 38% the results would have looked very different. Texas wouldn't have been as close and he would have carried Arizona with such numbers.

Trump in many Hispanic areas seems to have done around 5-7 points worse than W Bush did in 2004 and W got 44% so that would mean Trump got 37-39ish percentage of the Hispanic vote

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

Exit polling showed Trump getting only 32% of the Hispanic vote. If he got 38% the results would have looked very different. Texas wouldn't have been as close and he would have carried Arizona with such numbers.

Edison showed that Latinos somehow swung R by less than Asians, which clearly didn’t happen.

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/hispanic-voters-and-the-american?

Democrats are still trying to dismiss the importance of the Hispanic swing. The new line is that Hispanic voters like to vote for incumbent Presidents. People cite Bush’s 2004 run, which got 44% of the Hispanic vote, as a parallel. This could be true, but I have my doubts. 2004 was an election where the incumbent won, by a larger margin than in 2000; Whites also shifted towards Bush in 2004. 2020, in contrast, was an election in which the incumbent lost; Hispanics moved in the opposite direction to Whites. In any case, the “Hispanics like incumbents” theory is drawn from a very small sample, has no solid theory behind, is more than a bit patronizing, and in general smells like an ad-hoc self-serving piece of bullsh**t. It might be right, I guess, but Dems who embrace this explanation risk giving Republican operatives four more years to run wild with their Hispanic outreach efforts. Not a smart move in my opinion.

OK, so if it’s not the incumbent advantage, what might it be? Various other theories include:

• A concern for law & order and a dislike of “defund the police”
• Annoyance with the term “Latinx”
• A greater-than-realized concern for border security and dislike of illegal immigration
• The macho culture of MAGA
• Fear of socialism due to personal or ancestral experience with leftist regimes in Latin America
• Hispanics assimilating into whiteness and acquiring the values of White voters

Any and all of these might be true. Or it might be, as David Shor says, that Hispanics are simply more conservative than we realize, and Trump’s performance is a kind of reversion to the mean.

But I think one big, powerful explanation has been sorely neglected: Economics.

The boom of 2014-2019 — and it was a boom, even though we kind of ignored it — was good for everyone, but in percentage terms it was especially good for Hispanics:

[THG]

Exit polling showed Trump getting only 32% of the Hispanic vote. If he got 38% the results would have looked very different. Texas wouldn't have been as close and he would have carried Arizona with such numbers.

Trump in many Hispanic areas seems to have done around 5-7 points worse than W Bush did in 2004 and W got 44% so that would mean Trump got 37-39ish percentage of the Hispanic vote

Bush probably did better with urban Latinos than Trump, but not by much. Both performed similarly with rural Hispanics- you could even argue Trump outperformed Bush with rural Hispanics.

Also, Bush outperformed the generic Republican among Latinos by a significantly greater margin than Trump outperformed the generic downballot R with that demographic.

[DrScholl]

Exit polling showed Trump getting only 32% of the Hispanic vote. If he got 38% the results would have looked very different. Texas wouldn't have been as close and he would have carried Arizona with such numbers.

Trump in many Hispanic areas seems to have done around 5-7 points worse than W Bush did in 2004 and W got 44% so that would mean Trump got 37-39ish percentage of the Hispanic vote

If you go by the state by state data that seems really high though. With that Arizona should have stayed Republican and even Nevada would have flipped. Granted those numbers could have been offset by white suburban voters shifting. The actual numbers suggest that Trump did slightly better than McCain, but much worse than Bush.

[THG]

In 2004, Bush won college educated whites in Arizona by around 10.

In 2020, Trump lost college educated whites in Arizona by around 7.

That explains why Arizona did not go for Trump in 2020- even with a surge of Hispanic support.

[Person Man]

This sounds a lot like an article from 2005. That is, "Democrats have to improve with moderate and conservative  Hispanics in order be able to win an election without having to rely on W or his successor getting caught with a dead girl or live boy. Making Harry Reid ML and nominating Heath Schuler, Bob Casey, and a few other libertarian-leaning and even conservative Catholics and Evangelicals  was a start. "

Democrats did this in 2006 but didn't do it in 2008 and were fine. Most of their loses in 2010 were from those who got elected in 2006 on "not really being Democrats". They were fine again in 2012.
 

Republicans were said they had to do better with these people after 2012, won without them in 2014 and 2016, and have been doing better with them since without trying to do better.

[Non Swing Voter]

I can't stress enough how probable it is that the stimulus checks gave Trump an artificial boost with Latino voters. There was an article where some voters said that Trump's name on the check was interpreted as him sending the money.

Not to mention, historically, incumbent presidents have always gotten a boost with Latinos as well.

In most if not all cases, they didn’t increase their margins by nearly 20 points.

Muh stimulus and incumbency doesn’t explain this shift.

The margin increased by like 10%.

According to PewResearch (one of the more reliable sources when it comes to this stuff) Hispanics went from being 26% GOP in 2012, 28% GOP in 2016- to around 38% GOP in 2020. That’s not that dissimilar to 2004 Bush margins.

Also, winning a demographic by 40 points to only winning them by 20 points is a 20 point swing. That is what I meant.

The fact that the hispanic vote has oscillated from the mid 20's for the GOP (in a year Dems did really well overall and with minorities in general) to the low 40's (under Bush) since 2004, tells me this group is swingy but still maintains a distinct Democratic bent.

You could certainly argue that Democrats can't take hispanics for granted due to their swingyness, but it's still pretty clear that the needle hasn't moved all that much in the GOP's favor.  If this group was just stable in population it would be one thing but it's becoming a much bigger part of the electorate so the GOP is going to have real problems going forward if they keep losing this vote by 20 points in a "good" year.

[THG]

I can't stress enough how probable it is that the stimulus checks gave Trump an artificial boost with Latino voters. There was an article where some voters said that Trump's name on the check was interpreted as him sending the money.

Not to mention, historically, incumbent presidents have always gotten a boost with Latinos as well.

In most if not all cases, they didn’t increase their margins by nearly 20 points.

Muh stimulus and incumbency doesn’t explain this shift.

The margin increased by like 10%.

According to PewResearch (one of the more reliable sources when it comes to this stuff) Hispanics went from being 26% GOP in 2012, 28% GOP in 2016- to around 38% GOP in 2020. That’s not that dissimilar to 2004 Bush margins.

Also, winning a demographic by 40 points to only winning them by 20 points is a 20 point swing. That is what I meant.

The fact that the hispanic vote has oscillated from the mid 20's for the GOP (in a year Dems did really well overall and with minorities in general) to the low 40's (under Bush) since 2004, tells me this group is swingy but still maintains a distinct Democratic bent.

You could certainly argue that Democrats can't take hispanics for granted due to their swingyness, but it's still pretty clear that the needle hasn't moved all that much in the GOP's favor.  If this group was just stable in population it would be one thing but it's becoming a much bigger part of the electorate so the GOP is going to have real problems going forward if they keep losing this vote by 20 points in a "good" year.

Well, I don’t believe that this demographic will become reliably Republican for a while, but it is clear that Democratic under-performances with this demographic in a way mirror how the GOP has been getting worse with suburbanites/college whites.

Atleast this is true in places like Texas and Florida. But generally I do not view 2020 as a fluke- if anything, for the reasons OSR and myself pointed out, I view Bush’s performance with Hispanics as a bigger fluke, because he clearly outperformed the generic Republican with that demographic far more than Trump did. Trump in 2020 was not as much of an outlier especially if you look at the 2018 midterm results.

The devil is in the details, but the details are there.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

The election definitely felt like 2004. Bush won Florida fairly comfortably in 2004, only for it to snap back to barely voting for Obama twice. He also won New Mexico by a squeaker only for the next Republican candidates to all lose it in a blowout.

So I'm inclined to believe there is a pro-incumbent bias at work. We'll know more after 2024 when Biden has a shot at it again and Democrats have a chance at knocking off Rick Scott, who's far more vulnerable than Rubio in a D midterm.

[Nightcore Nationalist]

Exit polling showed Trump getting only 32% of the Hispanic vote. If he got 38% the results would have looked very different. Texas wouldn't have been as close and he would have carried Arizona with such numbers.

Trump in many Hispanic areas seems to have done around 5-7 points worse than W Bush did in 2004 and W got 44% so that would mean Trump got 37-39ish percentage of the Hispanic vote

Bush didn't get 45%, and Trump didn't get 38%.  Exit polls are suspect.  Trump did roughly 7-8% better last year than he did in 2016, probably 32 or 33%.

[MARGINS6729]

Well, it sure doesn't feel like it considering the administration's lukewarm and negligent stances on Cuba, Venezuela, and fixing the broken immigration system. I'll believe Biden considers them a priority when I see it!

They invest, they have unlimited reserves of money, they have these golden opportunities literally every few weeks, but they (painfully) blow them all and are so out-of-touch it's all useless! At least this is the case in Greater Miami.

An example right now being the Cuban protests here. The energy is palpable and you can't take a drive around here without passing by groups of people on the sidewalks shouting slogans. Cuban flags have become a staple on the road! I don't even live in the Cuban-American heartland of Miami-Dade and I'm seeing this stuff. The Democrats have the perfect opportunity to capitalize (or at least show sympathy!), but nooo...

Nothing's happening, and frustratingly there are certain people who want to give the Cuban regime praise on our side!

Maybe it's different in other parts of the country (I noticed very little mention of Florida's Hispanic population in the article, which is the third-largest in the nation and one of the fastest-growing) but there's a lot of work that remains to be done here if they want to rebuild from their collapse over the last few years.


By the way, anybody who wants to get past the paywall? Click this.

Biden just put out new sanctions on Cuba, is working with allies on Venezuela, sanctioned Nicaragua, and there are ads going up in Florida pledging his support for the Cuban people. That said, Democrats should be doing way more with this than they are. As for immigration, I have it on good authority from an immigration attorney that Trump ed up the system so disastrously that the Biden administration can't be expected to undo four years of Trump's policies. Democrats need to be doing way more outreach/messaging with Hispanic communities because if you don't sell it nobody will hear the message.

[Adam Griffin]

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ Though it's important to remember that Base Cuban FL™ & RGV combined were only around 5% of the national Latino vote in 2020 (more like 3.5-4% in 2016).