Hispanic Neighborhoods of Every Type Swung Right in 2020

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Florida:

Hialeah (lower-income Cuban): Trump+0.1, Trump+34.3, Right+32.2
Doral (Venezuelan/Colombian): Clinton +39.9, Trump +1.3, Right+41.2
Kissimmee: (Puerto Rican): Clinton +47.2, Biden+28.6, Right+18.6

New York:
31st State Senate District (63% Hispanic CVAP, predominantly Puerto Rican and Dominican): Clinton +83.2, Biden +69.3, Right+13.9

Texas:

36th State Assembly District (On Border, Urban South Texas, Mexican): Clinton +49.5, Biden +16.2, Right+33.3
77th State Assembly District (El Paso, Mexican): Clinton +60, Biden +50.1, Right+9.9
140th State Assembly District (Houston, Mexican): Clinton +53.9, Biden +37.7, Right+16.2

Arizona:
San Luis (On Border, Mexican): Clinton +84.2, Biden+51, Right+33.2
Drexel Heights (71% Hispanic CVAP CDP bordering Tucson, Mexican): Clinton +38.2, Clinton +37.4, Right+0.8
Tolleson (73% Hispanic CVAP CDP bordering Phoenix, Mexican): Clinton +58.6, Clinton +52.3, Right+6.3

California:
Huntington Park (95% Hispanic CVAP, LA County, Mexican): Clinton+79.4, Biden +63.2, Right+16.2
Santa Ana: (65% Hispanic CVAP, Orange County, Mexican): Clinton+51.5, Biden+38.4, Right +13.1
Delano: (67% Hispanic CVAP, Kern County Central Valley, Mexican): Clinton+56.4, Biden +37.6, Right+18.8
141,000 Pop Sample of San Jose Precincts*: (53% Hispanic 29% Asian CVAP, Mexican): Clinton+70.7, Biden+49.7, Right+21

Not all of these districts or cities are equally Hispanic, or swung equally to the right. There were even some areas that swung close to not at all, like parts of urban Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada (although they still trended right compared to the nation). But, although there were differences, all swung to the right. On this forum, a great deal of attention is given to the ideas that swings can be attributed solely to lacks of investment, confined to specific groups (ie Cubans), or the product of incumbency benefit. While the above does nothing to respond to the third idea, it should be disprobatory to the previous two. Even if one wishes to argue that the magnitude of swings can be attributed to, say, the incompetency of the FL Dem Party compared with the competency of the FLGOP, that cannot explain swings right in areas with substantial Dem investment (ie Houston) or little to no investment from either party (Huntington Park). Similarly, rhetoric on Cuba or hawkishness on Venezuela alone seems unlikely as an explanation for swings in Santa Ana.

*Selected due to lack of local government units/districts able to give good indicators. Borders:

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

This is old news Haley/Ryan (for the record I enjoyed hearing about her snipe at 75+ politicians on 538 when she announced her candidacy)

Re: wait, is CA going to SWING R?

Hot take: increased GOTV efforts resulted in right-leaning/anti-establishment, low-propensity Latino and Asian voters who normally wouldn’t bother voting in a Titanium D state to turn out.

Re: 2020 Urban rightward shift and Rural + Suburban leftward shift

The reason that the rural areas swung to the Dems and the urban areas swung to the GOP is because the election was extremely high-turnout, which brought out low-propensity voters. It seems reasonable to say that infrequent urban voters are probably more conservative and infrequent rural voters are probably more liberal, because if you're in an area that votes overwhelmingly for one party and you lean the opposite, it can feel hopeless and it would take a lot to convince you to turn out.

Re: How did Ds collapse so fast with Cubans?

A lot of people talking about elections online have a tendency to say that trends from the last election or two will continue forever and nothing will stop them. As we all know, a lot of Democrats were guilty of this wrt Cubans after 2016.

But more to the question, iirc from an ethnic politics seminar I took during undergrad, Latino and Asian voters (particularly first-gen ones) are less attached to partisan identities and therefore more open to persuasion than white or black voters. Intuitively that makes sense.  

Edit: Also among Cubans, like with a lot of recent immigrants groups, there are still of nonvoters bc of foreign-born residents and second-generation Americans who haven't reached voting age. Those people + potential future emigres (even if Cuban immigration wasn't what it was at its peak, it's still happening), create the potential for more volatility as they transition into becoming voters.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

But also

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:

I read some sort of religious survey the other day--I think it was from PRRI--that had Hispanic Catholics as to the left of white Catholics (and often even white mainline Protestants) across most issue areas, but somewhat more susceptible to conspiracy theories (including QAnon but not limited to it) and significantly more hostile to the Lockdowns And Mandates For All style of pandemic response. And of course Hispanic Evangelicals are more closely aligned with white Evangelicals on those topics than they are with non-Evangelicals of any race. That sort of thing, plus generally lackluster Democratic messaging that even on race relations seems geared more towards Susan from the PTA than towards Susanna from the nail salon, explains the Hispanic shift quite nicely without needing to resort to weird noble-savage assertions about muh machismo or flip-the-script insistences that acktschyewally most Hispanics are right-wing on immigration and entitlements.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

This is old news Haley/Ryan (for the record I enjoyed hearing about her snipe at 75+ politicians on 538 when she announced her candidacy)

Re: wait, is CA going to SWING R?

Hot take: increased GOTV efforts resulted in right-leaning/anti-establishment, low-propensity Latino and Asian voters who normally wouldn’t bother voting in a Titanium D state to turn out.

Re: 2020 Urban rightward shift and Rural + Suburban leftward shift

The reason that the rural areas swung to the Dems and the urban areas swung to the GOP is because the election was extremely high-turnout, which brought out low-propensity voters. It seems reasonable to say that infrequent urban voters are probably more conservative and infrequent rural voters are probably more liberal, because if you're in an area that votes overwhelmingly for one party and you lean the opposite, it can feel hopeless and it would take a lot to convince you to turn out.

Re: How did Ds collapse so fast with Cubans?

A lot of people talking about elections online have a tendency to say that trends from the last election or two will continue forever and nothing will stop them. As we all know, a lot of Democrats were guilty of this wrt Cubans after 2016.

But more to the question, iirc from an ethnic politics seminar I took during undergrad, Latino and Asian voters (particularly first-gen ones) are less attached to partisan identities and therefore more open to persuasion than white or black voters. Intuitively that makes sense.  

Edit: Also among Cubans, like with a lot of recent immigrants groups, there are still of nonvoters bc of foreign-born residents and second-generation Americans who haven't reached voting age. Those people + potential future emigres (even if Cuban immigration wasn't what it was at its peak, it's still happening), create the potential for more volatility as they transition into becoming voters.

I'm aware that this is old news. I'm re-mentioning it now because it seems to have been forgotten by many posters on this forum. I agree with some of the content of these posts, but will respond in more detail when I get the time.

[It’s so Joever]

This is old news Haley/Ryan (for the record I enjoyed hearing about her snipe at 75+ politicians on 538 when she announced her candidacy)

Re: wait, is CA going to SWING R?

Hot take: increased GOTV efforts resulted in right-leaning/anti-establishment, low-propensity Latino and Asian voters who normally wouldn’t bother voting in a Titanium D state to turn out.

Re: 2020 Urban rightward shift and Rural + Suburban leftward shift

The reason that the rural areas swung to the Dems and the urban areas swung to the GOP is because the election was extremely high-turnout, which brought out low-propensity voters. It seems reasonable to say that infrequent urban voters are probably more conservative and infrequent rural voters are probably more liberal, because if you're in an area that votes overwhelmingly for one party and you lean the opposite, it can feel hopeless and it would take a lot to convince you to turn out.

Re: How did Ds collapse so fast with Cubans?

A lot of people talking about elections online have a tendency to say that trends from the last election or two will continue forever and nothing will stop them. As we all know, a lot of Democrats were guilty of this wrt Cubans after 2016.

But more to the question, iirc from an ethnic politics seminar I took during undergrad, Latino and Asian voters (particularly first-gen ones) are less attached to partisan identities and therefore more open to persuasion than white or black voters. Intuitively that makes sense.  

Edit: Also among Cubans, like with a lot of recent immigrants groups, there are still of nonvoters bc of foreign-born residents and second-generation Americans who haven't reached voting age. Those people + potential future emigres (even if Cuban immigration wasn't what it was at its peak, it's still happening), create the potential for more volatility as they transition into becoming voters.

I'm aware that this is old news. I'm re-mentioning it now because it seems to have been forgotten by many posters on this forum. I agree with some of the content of these posts, but will respond in more detail when I get the time.

Literally nobody has forgotten that Hispanic neighborhoods largely swung right. Calm your tits.

[Continential]

How did these neighborhoods vote in 2022?

[Libertas Vel Mors]

This is old news Haley/Ryan (for the record I enjoyed hearing about her snipe at 75+ politicians on 538 when she announced her candidacy)

Re: wait, is CA going to SWING R?

Hot take: increased GOTV efforts resulted in right-leaning/anti-establishment, low-propensity Latino and Asian voters who normally wouldn’t bother voting in a Titanium D state to turn out.

Re: 2020 Urban rightward shift and Rural + Suburban leftward shift

The reason that the rural areas swung to the Dems and the urban areas swung to the GOP is because the election was extremely high-turnout, which brought out low-propensity voters. It seems reasonable to say that infrequent urban voters are probably more conservative and infrequent rural voters are probably more liberal, because if you're in an area that votes overwhelmingly for one party and you lean the opposite, it can feel hopeless and it would take a lot to convince you to turn out.

Re: How did Ds collapse so fast with Cubans?

A lot of people talking about elections online have a tendency to say that trends from the last election or two will continue forever and nothing will stop them. As we all know, a lot of Democrats were guilty of this wrt Cubans after 2016.

But more to the question, iirc from an ethnic politics seminar I took during undergrad, Latino and Asian voters (particularly first-gen ones) are less attached to partisan identities and therefore more open to persuasion than white or black voters. Intuitively that makes sense.  

Edit: Also among Cubans, like with a lot of recent immigrants groups, there are still of nonvoters bc of foreign-born residents and second-generation Americans who haven't reached voting age. Those people + potential future emigres (even if Cuban immigration wasn't what it was at its peak, it's still happening), create the potential for more volatility as they transition into becoming voters.

I'm aware that this is old news. I'm re-mentioning it now because it seems to have been forgotten by many posters on this forum. I agree with some of the content of these posts, but will respond in more detail when I get the time.

Literally nobody has forgotten that Hispanic neighborhoods largely swung right. Calm your tits.

Check out half the posts under "How did Ds collapse so fast with Cubans?" and you will find explanations just like the two I said the broad swing indicated the wrongness above.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

I'm aware that this is old news. I'm re-mentioning it now because it seems to have been forgotten by many posters on this forum. I agree with some of the content of these posts, but will respond in more detail when I get the time.

If anything, I think the exact opposite is true. Miami-Dade and the RGV have been the most posted-about US regions on this site since November 2020.

[King of Kensington]

It's the sharpening of the educational divide, as well as less emphasis on immigration as an issue, I think.

[ProgressiveModerate]

It's the sharpening of the educational divide, as well as less emphasis on immigration as an issue, I think.

And cultural. A lot of Hispanics, even in urban areas, are very religious and hold more traditional/conservative values. I think less emphasis on immigration def helps them feel more comfortable voting for Rs.

You also have the fact Hispanics across the board tend to be a very very low turnout group. Especially in the Hispanic community, I think a lot of swings across elections can be explained by turnout dynamics.

I think it's worth noting that overall, Hispanics still lean overwhelmingly D in most cases; Cubans and the RGV are not representative of Hispanics at large.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

You also have the fact Hispanics across the board tend to be a very very low turnout group. Especially in the Hispanic community, I think a lot of swings across elections can be explained by turnout dynamics.

I think it's worth noting that overall, Hispanics still lean overwhelmingly D in most cases; Cubans and the RGV are not representative of Hispanics at large.

I wish this could be bolded and stickied in every thread about Hispanic voters