{"id":13459,"date":"2023-08-08T18:09:38","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T18:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13459"},"modified":"2023-08-10T19:04:11","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T19:04:11","slug":"theres-no-such-thing-as-the-latino-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13459","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s No Such Thing As The \u2018Latino Vote\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Nathaniel Rakich and<\/strong> Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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With only 42 days left until the election, Joe Biden has his work cut out<\/a> for him with Latino voters. That\u2019s according to his senior adviser Symone Sanders, who has had to answer for why Biden appears to be losing ground among Latinos. According to a recent Latino Decisions\/National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials poll<\/a>, 65 percent of Latinos plan to vote for Biden or lean toward him, but this is still 14 percentage points lower than the 79 percent of Latino voters who said they supported Clinton in the pollster\u2019s national election-eve poll in 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s true that Latino voters do, as a whole, tend to be more Democratic than Republican<\/a>, a trend that has only accelerated in recent years. But they don\u2019t vote as a single bloc (in 2016<\/a>, at least 1 in 5 Latino voters<\/a> still backed Trump): How Latinos vote in Florida<\/a>, for instance, can be very different from how Latinos in the Southwest or Northeast vote. These differences especially matter due to the size of the Latino population in a number of key swing states. <\/p>\n\n\n

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The size and diversity of this group make it even more difficult for any candidate \u2014 even a Democrat \u2014 to take Latino voters for granted. On the one hand, many of the political divides we see play out among Latino voters \u2014 along lines of gender, age and religion \u2014 are similar to what we observe in other big groups in the electorate, but there are unique considerations here, too, like how long Latino voters have lived in the U.S. or their specific place of origin. And this year, depending on how some of these divides within the Latino community manifest, the \u201cLatino vote\u201d could end up splitting in a number of key states \u2014 with Biden benefiting in some instances, and Trump benefiting in others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Distance from the immigration experience matters<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

One of the biggest factors in a Hispanic voter\u2019s political identity is how long his or her family has been in the United States. For instance, foreign-born Latinos and the U.S.-born children of Latino immigrants tend to be more Democratic than Latinos whose families have been in the U.S. for at least three generations. According to Latino Decisions\u2019s election-eve poll, first-generation Hispanic Americans1<\/sup><\/a> were 12 percentage points more likely than third- or higher-generation Hispanic Americans to support Clinton in 2016 (84 percent vs. 72 percent), although both groups strongly supported her over Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany Latino Americans can trace their family history to before the United States was the United States,\u201d says Melissa Michelson<\/a>, a professor at Menlo College who studies Latino politics. (Specifically, 32 percent of Latino registered voters are third generation or higher, according to Pew Research Center\u2019s 2019 National Survey of Latinos<\/a>.) \u201cAnd they have a very different perspective from folks who are closer to the immigration experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gary Segura<\/a>, a co-founder and senior partner at Latino Decisions, sees both economic and cultural factors at play. First, higher-generation Hispanic Americans are likelier to be higher income, which nudges them toward the Republican side of the aisle. But their Hispanic identity also tends to be weaker. For instance, a 2017 Pew report<\/a> found that only about one-third of self-identified Hispanics whose families have been in the U.S. for at least three generations had parents who took them to Hispanic cultural celebrations or who spoke often about their heritage while growing up, and relatively few live in predominantly Hispanic or Latino neighborhoods. According to that Pew report, Latinos are more likely than white or Black people to marry people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds \u2014 which means that Latinos with deeper family roots in the U.S. are also more likely to be of mixed ancestry. Simply put, the longer a Hispanic family has lived in the U.S., the likelier they are to have assimilated \u2014 and vote more like white Americans, who lean toward the Republican Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the flip side, foreign-born Latinos and their U.S.-born children \u2014 groups that make up about one-third of Latino registered voters each, per Pew \u2014 tend to have stronger identities as Latinos or immigrants. That, in turn, makes them likelier to be turned off by President Trump\u2019s anti-immigrant rhetoric,<\/a> which political scientist Betina Cutaia Wilkinson<\/a> told FiveThirtyEight \u201chas definitely brought together Latinos more than we would have seen in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a survey of the same group of first-generation immigrants conducted before and after the 2016 election, political scientists Michael Jones-Correa<\/a> and James McCann<\/a> found that respondents\u2019 fear about the deportation of friends or family members rose after Trump became president, regardless of whether they were personally at risk of being removed from the country. And first- and second-generation Hispanic Americans may be especially likely to have a close friend or family member who is not a citizen, or even undocumented. <\/p>\n\n\n

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That said, the importance of immigration to Hispanic voters can be overstated. In that Latino Decisions\/NALEO poll, immigration was tied as the sixth most important issue Latinos wanted the next president to address (that said, \u201caddressing racism and discrimination\u201d ranked third). Instead, Latinos\u2019 priorities tend to mirror the general population\u2019s: The coronavirus ranked first, followed by health care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Relatedly, Latinos who speak Spanish as their primary language are likelier to vote Democratic than those who primarily speak English. It\u2019s possible that\u2019s just a byproduct of the divide by immigrant generation \u2014 Spanish speakers are also likely closer to the immigration experience. Mark Hugo Lopez<\/a>, Pew\u2019s director of global migration and demography research, conducted a multivariable analysis and found that, once generation was controlled for, language was not a statistically significant determinant of Hispanic partisanship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Michelson noted that language is intimately tied to assimilation \u2014 and media consumption. Spanish-language news, in particular, encourages viewers to think of themselves as part of a pan-ethnic Latino group living in the United States, Michelson said. That kind of coverage can shape the way people think about issues like immigration, even if they haven\u2019t been personally affected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ethnicity also factors into partisanship<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Latinos tend to identify<\/a> with their specific nationality first, and as Latino second. The Hispanic experience can be very different depending on one\u2019s place of origin. Puerto Ricans may not have all that much in common with Mexican Americans, who may find it hard to relate to Cuban Americans. This, in turn, can affect how and why they vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take Cuban Americans. At only 4 percent of the national Latino population,2<\/sup><\/a> they don\u2019t seem like an influential group at first blush \u2014 but they are disproportionately concentrated in the crucial swing state of Florida, where they make up a plurality (29 percent) of the Hispanic population. After Fidel Castro and his communist regime came to power in 1959, Cuban Americans began fleeing to the U.S. in droves and embraced the Republican Party, which was perceived as tougher on communism throughout most of the Cold War; in addition, many Cuban Americans blamed Democratic President John F. Kennedy for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Cuban Americans have been drifting toward Democrats<\/a> in recent elections \u2014 they basically split their support between the two candidates in 2016. That, it turns out, is due to generational changes: According to an analysis by EquisLabs<\/a>, a data firm that focuses on the Latino vote, voters who personally fled Cuba are still strongly Republican, while the growing share of Cuban Americans born in the U.S. actually lean Democratic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there\u2019s mounting evidence that Trump is making a comeback of sorts with Cuban Americans this year. \u201cTrump has reversed Obama\u2019s policies on Cuba and taken a hardened stance on Venezuela,\u201d whose socialist dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro is seen as a modern-day Castro, said political scientist Dario Moreno<\/a>. \u201cThat has improved his standing with Cubans.\u201d Indeed, a recent EquisLabs poll<\/a> of Florida found Trump leading Biden among Cuban Americans, 54 percent to 37 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Latino origin groups lean toward Democrats to varying degrees. Mexican Americans \u2014 who, per Latino Decisions, supported Clinton 81 percent to 15 percent in 2016 \u2014 basically singlehandedly drive the narrative that Latinos are core Democratic voters thanks to their overwhelming numbers: 63 percent of the national Latino population is of Mexican descent, and that figure is even higher in swing states like Arizona, Nevada and Texas. According to Florida International University Professor Eduardo Gamarra<\/a>, the group has trended toward Democrats in large part because of the clear contrast between the parties on racial and immigration issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans are solidly Democratic: Latino Decisions found they supported Clinton 79 percent to 19 percent. However, there is a sense that Puerto Ricans have yet to live up to their potential for Democrats. \u201cPuerto Rican political participation on the island is above 80 percent,\u201d Segura said, but \u201cPuerto Rican turnout on the mainland is lower than any other subgroup of Latinos.\u201d And according to Moreno, Puerto Ricans in Florida (where they make up 21 percent of the Hispanic population, as opposed to just under 10 percent nationally) are less Democratic than their counterparts in the Northeast<\/a>. While Trump has a fraught relationship<\/a> with the commonwealth<\/a>, Moreno says that might not matter much to Florida\u2019s Puerto Ricans because many left the island precisely because they have a negative view of the Puerto Rican government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is little research on the political leanings of the remaining Latino nationalities \u2014 mostly because they are too small to poll easily. However, combined, they may have small but significant voting power: For example, Central American origin groups like Salvadoran Americans, Guatemalan Americans, Honduran Americans and Nicaraguan Americans combine to make up a decent share of the national (9 percent) and Floridian (11 percent) Hispanic population. Clinton won 82 percent of Central American voters in 2016, per Latino Decisions, and Biden could do even better this year. Central Americans \u201chave really been damaged by the president\u2019s immigration policy,\u201d such as his efforts to end Temporary Protected Status<\/a>, explained Moreno. \u201cThis is where Democrats will have some opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, several experts told FiveThirtyEight that Trump\u2019s hardline stance toward Venezuela appears to be endearing him to Venezuelan American voters, but they also cautioned against making too much of it. According to Gamarra\u2019s polling, Trump is still under 50 percent with Venezuelan Americans. More importantly, they represent a mere drop in the bucket of the broader electorate: They make up just 3.7 percent of the Hispanic population in Florida and 0.7 percent of the Hispanic population nationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latino evangelicals are a swing group<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Religion is another fissure within the Latino community that often matters a lot politically \u2014 although not in the ways you might expect. Recent data from the Pew Research Center<\/a> shows that slightly less than half (47 percent) of Hispanic adults identified as Catholic in 2018, while 24 percent were Protestant and 23 percent were religiously unaffiliated. That means Latinos are about as likely to be nonreligious as the American population as a whole \u2014 and the uptick in the share of religiously unaffiliated people is largely coming at the expense of the Catholic population, which has been losing ground in the past 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The fact that Latino Catholics make up a smaller share of the population is a potential downside for Biden, since Hispanic Catholic voters are one of the most Democratic religious groups around,<\/a> and Biden\u2019s Catholicism might be a motivator for some Catholic voters this year. In general, though, the fact that Catholic voters mostly seem to be heading into the nonreligious \u2014 rather than the Protestant \u2014 column isn\u2019t a bad thing for Democrats, since nonreligious voters are moving steadily into the Democratic camp<\/a> with no real outreach from the party or the candidate, and Latinos are no exception. \u201cAn increasing share of Latinos are identifying as liberals, and that\u2019s being driven by the growth of the \u2018nones,\u2019\u201d said Juhem Navarro-Rivera<\/a>, the political research director at Socioanal\u00edtica Research, a consulting firm that specializes in Latino and Hispanic politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the group among which Biden is most liable to struggle \u2014 and where Trump may have the most success picking up or maintaining support \u2014 is among evangelicals, who make up the vast majority of Latino Protestants. Navarro-Rivera and other experts told us that Latino evangelicals tend to be more right-leaning than Catholic or nonreligious Latinos, although they\u2019re nowhere near as conservative as white evangelical Protestants. According to Latino Decisions\u2019s 2016 election-eve poll, 60 percent of Latinos who identify as born-again Christians (a group that overlaps heavily with evangelicals) supported Clinton, while 37 percent supported Trump. By contrast, 82 percent of Hispanic Catholics supported Clinton and only 15 percent supported Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLatino evangelicals are more conservative, but they\u2019re not heavily Republican \u2014 really, they\u2019re a kind of swing group,\u201d said Navarro-Rivera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been difficult, though, for Republicans to make more inroads with this group as the share of Latinos who are Protestant has held steady for at least the past decade<\/a>. Not to mention, the party has largely stood behind Trump\u2019s anti-immigrant rhetoric, and that might give some Latino evangelicals pause. \u201cImmigration is a complicated issue for [Latino evangelicals], because they are more conservative generally but many are immigrants or work with immigrants,\u201d Navarro-Rivera said. \u201cSo there are these cross-pressures that complicate the way they approach these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latinos are also divided by age and gender<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The rising share of Latinos who are nonreligious highlights another cleavage that could matter a lot electorally: age. Like religiously unaffiliated Americans overall, nonreligious Latinos are overwhelmingly likely to be young. And the population as a whole is young, too: According to a Pew analysis from 2018<\/a>, 61 percent of Latinos were under the age of 35. Most young Latinos are also U.S. born, which means they\u2019re eligible to vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young Latinos tend to be more liberal<\/a> \u2014 but less loyal to the Democratic Party \u2014 than older generations. But it\u2019s hard to untangle how much of these differences are unique to Latinos or just a reflection of broader divisions within the electorate. \u201cI think a lot of younger Latinos\u2019 worldview is shaped by a sense of the Democratic Party\u2019s failures,\u201d said Bernard Fraga<\/a>, a political science professor at Emory University who studies Latino politics. \u201cIn their lifetimes they\u2019ve seen a failure to deliver on immigration reform, and a lot of compromising and settling for second best.\u201d That, according to Fraga, helps explain why young Latinos are more dissatisfied with mainstream Democratic candidates than their parents or grandparents. And it emphasizes why why this might be a difficult group for Biden to reach. As we wrote during the Democratic primary, Sanders benefited from his campaign\u2019s extensive outreach to Latinos \u2014 particularly young Latinos \u2014 in states like Nevada<\/a> and California<\/a>, while Biden struggled to connect with this group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gender is an example of another division that matters for Latinos \u2014 but maybe not in a way that\u2019s so different from Americans as a whole. Over the past few years, turnout among Hispanic women has risen<\/a>, and they\u2019ve simultaneously become an even more reliable Democratic voting bloc. Lopez noted that education could be at least partially driving this shift: The share of Hispanic women with a four-year college degree has risen to 22 percent, up from only 14 percent about a decade ago. Hispanic men are also increasingly likely to go to college, Lopez said, but not at the same rate as women. But he also noted that these trends don\u2019t significantly differ from those seen in female voters overall. And most of the experts we talked with agreed that this is probably an area where Latinos are largely being influenced by the same forces that are shaping the entire American electorate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nathaniel Rakich is an elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight. @baseballot<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux is a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight. @ameliatd<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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