Why do minority communities tend to swing towards incumbents?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Even 2012 and 2020 Presidential elections where the incumbent did worse than last time, minorities by and large swung towards them, in many cases by pretty extreme amounts.

Some examples of this are:

-Cubans in Miami-Dade; Hispanics in Osceola County
-Garden Grove
-RGV and most border Hispanic communities
-"Black belt"
-New York City as a whole
-Native reservations

In every Pres election since 2000, this has been true for all these communities.

Are there really a significant portion of voters in these communities who vote for the incumbent as a rule? Are they more leniant on the incumbent? Does it have to do with coincidence if the issues that year? Is there a correlation with turnout?

Some of these shifts can't be understated because they are often parts of the coutnry that see the largest shifts one way or another.

[Hope For A New Era]

I'm not totally sure, but I did a thought experiment and realized that if I lived in another country I might have a pro-incumbent voting bias too. A combination of a feeling of "maybe I don't have all the information by not having the experience of living here" and "I'm not one of them, this is their choice, not mine." Or something. Maybe I'm just crazy. But it's what came to mind.

[Agafin]

I'm not totally sure, but I did a thought experiment and realized that if I lived in another country I might have a pro-incumbent voting bias too. A combination of a feeling of "maybe I don't have all the information by not having the experience of living here" and "I'm not one of them, this is their choice, not mine." Or something. Maybe I'm just crazy. But it's what came to mind.

This explanation is probably correct when it comes to immigrant communities. I know for a fact that if I were to immigrate to America, I would pretty much never take part in any protest or really, anything political because I'd feel like I was interfering in other people's problems. And even after gaining citizenship, I would probably have a strong incumbent bias too.

But the explanation doesn't work for the black belt, native reserves or historical Hispanic populations ( like those in the rgv) as they've been part of the country for generations (or even since its inception).

[Sol]

I don't know if necessarily a "swing to incumbents" is the best explanation for why some of these communities voted the way they did, and in some cases there clearly wasn't a swing to incumbents--Trump clearly did worse with Natives in 2020 than in 2016, for example.

Romney alienated a lot of immigrant and Latino communities with rhetoric around self-deportation, so it shouldn't be surprising that did poorly in those areas.