Earlier this week, a poll released by NBC/Telemunmdo indicates that Latinos favor Democrat control of Congress by 54%. One may be tempted to ask, while yawning, what else is new, because for eons, Latinos have been staunch Democrat supporters.
What is significant here is not the current level of support, which is substantial at 54%, but the direction of the trend. Similar polls have previously shown the Democrat preference at 67% in 2016 and 59% in 2020. That is a drop of 13 percentage points in four years, which is significant enough to cause concern among Democrat leaders.
Whenever discussing the actions of any ethnic group, it is imperative that we include a very important caveat. Latinos, like all other ethnic groups, are very far from being homogeneous. For example, folks whose roots are from Cuba or Venezuela, most likely have ideas and perspectives very different from those whose roots are from Guatemala or Mexico. However, in this case, honoring the standard generalization will not diminish the validity of our arguments.
Before we get into the reasons for this relatively recent move of Latino support from Democrat to Republican, it would be useful to consider some of the history of Latino partisanship.
If we are to generalize about any group’s nationwide political inclination, the best way to do so is to look at how they voted at presidential elections. Here is a 40-year record of those votes, showing the percentage of Latinos that voted for the Republican candidate.
| 1980 | Reagan | 35% |
| 1984 | Reagan | 37% |
| 1988 | Bush 1 | 30% |
| 1992 | Bush 1 | 25% |
| 1996 | Dole | 21% |
| 2000 | Bush 2 | 35% |
| 2004 | Bush 2 | 42% |
| 2008 | McCain | 31% |
| 2012 | Romney | 27% |
| 2016 | Trump | 29% |
| 2020 | Trump | 32% |
It is noteworthy that the Latino support for Republicans, as reflected in presidential elections, has been averaging 31%, which is in line with the historical 67% preference for Democrats by Latino voters. It is logical to assume that a drop in favor from 67% to 54% will induce a substantial increase in the percentage of Latino voters that vote Republican.
There are many reasons why the Democrats have enjoyed wide support by Latinos, including but not limited to the following.
Tradition has been a significant factor. People are likely to support the political party that their parents and grandparents supported. Latino support for Democrats has been in sync with this custom.
Latino immigrants suffer from the same malady that most other immigrants have suffered, namely a dependence on goodies provided by Democrats, even though those goodies serve only to keep them dependent on the government.
Most countries do not have the American tradition of a strong middle class. Those countries are most often run by elites, much like the Democrats in this country.
Democrats are masters at fomenting class and ethnic warfare which tends to make assimilation of immigrants more difficult than it should be.
News media misinformation has been successful in portraying Republicans as bigots, sexists, and racists, while downplaying a lot of the Republican effort to support minorities. One example of this is that most Latinos don’t know that Republicans were the driving force behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This effort was spearheaded by Republicans like Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Representative William McCulloch of Ohio. Likewise, it was Republicans, like President Ronald Reagan and Senator Alan Simpson who joined Democrat Representative Romano Mazzoli to successfully pass the Simpson-Mazzoli Act of 1986, which gave amnesty to illegal aliens.
With all this in the background, it seems counterintuitive that there should be a shift in Latino support from Democrat to Republican. That shift becomes a lot easier to understand if we look at what has been happening in the last four years.
With the proliferation of alternate news sources, the mainstream media’s ability to mislead and obfuscate is being significantly reduced.
Those who take a close look, including some Latinos, are realizing that today’s Democrat Party is not the party of the middle class that it may have been in the past. It is currently the party of the elites and radicals, exhibiting a disturbing communist influence.
As has been the case with most immigrants, a significant number of Latinos are assimilating and beginning to regard themselves as American first and Latinos second. They are not rushing to embrace the Republican Party, but they are getting closer to the almost 50/50 split displayed by all registered voters.
Latinos are gradually awakening to the fact that Democrats are using them as pawns, by providing carefully rationed goodies, just enough to keep them dependent, in the Democrat plantation.
But the most significant reason for the shift can be summarized in three words, Donald John Trump. Yes, the same Trump who has been mischaracterized as a major bigot, sexist, and racist, has given Latinos the best employment and real income situation in recorded history, a solid foreign policy, and a common-sense immigration policy. Most important, Trump did this without pandering or handing out special benefits. He did it by improving the lot of all Americans. By contrast, the current occupant of the White House, along with his accomplices in congress, have undone most if not all the good Trump did. It is very difficult for thinking persons, including Latinos, to ignore the damage that Biden and the Democrats have done to our country. It makes sense that they would be looking for alternatives.
Let us look more closely at Trump’s share of the Latino vote in his 2020 reelection bid, and what it could mean for future elections. At 32% he was only slightly above the average of 31% for all Republican presidential candidates. But he did this in spite of the largest, most Goebbles-like misinformation campaign mounted by Democrats, the mainstream news media, and even some Republicans. Had the mainstream media been fair and balanced, and had politicians engaged in honest discourse instead of the character assassination of Trump, imagine how much higher his share of the vote would have been, including the Latino vote.
What this means is that if Republicans at every level, including the RNC and the AZGOP, play their cards right by stepping up their effort to inform Latinos about what the GOP stands for, we could see Latino votes for Republicans in the mid-forty’s percentage range. If that happens, Republicans will have landslide victories in 2022, 2024, and beyond.