Why Latinos are turning to the Republican Party.
[b] CNN[/b]
We may be witnessing a critical turning point in Latino politics in the United States.
Justin Gest
Justin Gest
Contrary to their monolithic treatment by many Americans, Latinos have always been very diverse – economically, culturally and in their ethnic and national origins. But, politically speaking, they were reliably Democratic.
That may no longer be true. In an era when conservative politics is acutely nationalist and consumed by a sense of cultural threat, a number of new polls show Latino voters growing more Republican.
But this trend may be less about how Latinos see America’s political parties and more about how new generations of Latinos see themselves.
“The idea of unidad – Latin unity – not all Latinos buy into that,” says Sergio Garcia-Rios, a Cornell University political scientist and the polling director for Univision. “People have multiple identities… (And) we’re starting to see a lot more later-generation Latinos, who are just farther away from an immigrant’s arrival.”
As the 2022 Texas primary elections approach in March, the Lone Star state offers a telling example. In the 2020 presidential race, Democrats targeted Texas, believing the pace of demographic change played in their favor. Like much of the American Southwest, an aging, White working-class population was giving way to urban professionals and immigrant-origin minorities – key constituents of the Democrats’ coalition.
But after Hillary Clinton won Zapata County, a county along the Mexico border, by almost 33 points in 2016, it turned red in 2020. Webb County, another border county, doubled its Republican turnout from 2016. And, in Starr County, south of Webb, Republicans recorded a 55% shift from 2016, the single biggest swing to the right in the entire country.
The Trump campaign saw similar numbers from White working-class regions in the Upper Midwest and Rust Belt in 2016, but Zapata, Webb and Starr counties are respectively 94%, 95% and 96% Latino. And Trump actually performed 10 points better across Texas’s 18 counties where Latinos make up 80% majorities in 2020 than he did in 2016.
These voters were ostensibly in the crosshairs of Trump’s assault on demographic change – the Mexican Americans whose allegiance, virtues and values he had questioned, going so far as claiming a US-born judge of Mexican ancestry, Gonzalo Curiel, could not be impartial due to his heritage. (Trump did not apologize, but he later claimed his words had been “misconstrued.”)
And these voters lived up against the border he wished to militarize, the border to which he attributed so many of America’s ills. How did Trump’s rhetoric not sufficiently stir the Latino identity of people in the Rio Grande Valley to mobilize greater Democratic support?
joe rogan jordan peterson podcast spotify
Don't pretend you don't know what Joe Rogan is all about
The answer was simple: Many people in South Texas do not think of themselves as Latinos or immigrants – and they didn’t vote based on Trump’s rhetoric around either of those identities. Often referred to as “Tejanos,” many of these Texas residents have lived in the United States for six, seven and even eight generations.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/14/opinions/republican-latino-voters-gest/index.html
We may be witnessing a critical turning point in Latino politics in the United States.
Justin Gest
Justin Gest
Contrary to their monolithic treatment by many Americans, Latinos have always been very diverse – economically, culturally and in their ethnic and national origins. But, politically speaking, they were reliably Democratic.
That may no longer be true. In an era when conservative politics is acutely nationalist and consumed by a sense of cultural threat, a number of new polls show Latino voters growing more Republican.
But this trend may be less about how Latinos see America’s political parties and more about how new generations of Latinos see themselves.
“The idea of unidad – Latin unity – not all Latinos buy into that,” says Sergio Garcia-Rios, a Cornell University political scientist and the polling director for Univision. “People have multiple identities… (And) we’re starting to see a lot more later-generation Latinos, who are just farther away from an immigrant’s arrival.”
As the 2022 Texas primary elections approach in March, the Lone Star state offers a telling example. In the 2020 presidential race, Democrats targeted Texas, believing the pace of demographic change played in their favor. Like much of the American Southwest, an aging, White working-class population was giving way to urban professionals and immigrant-origin minorities – key constituents of the Democrats’ coalition.
But after Hillary Clinton won Zapata County, a county along the Mexico border, by almost 33 points in 2016, it turned red in 2020. Webb County, another border county, doubled its Republican turnout from 2016. And, in Starr County, south of Webb, Republicans recorded a 55% shift from 2016, the single biggest swing to the right in the entire country.
The Trump campaign saw similar numbers from White working-class regions in the Upper Midwest and Rust Belt in 2016, but Zapata, Webb and Starr counties are respectively 94%, 95% and 96% Latino. And Trump actually performed 10 points better across Texas’s 18 counties where Latinos make up 80% majorities in 2020 than he did in 2016.
These voters were ostensibly in the crosshairs of Trump’s assault on demographic change – the Mexican Americans whose allegiance, virtues and values he had questioned, going so far as claiming a US-born judge of Mexican ancestry, Gonzalo Curiel, could not be impartial due to his heritage. (Trump did not apologize, but he later claimed his words had been “misconstrued.”)
And these voters lived up against the border he wished to militarize, the border to which he attributed so many of America’s ills. How did Trump’s rhetoric not sufficiently stir the Latino identity of people in the Rio Grande Valley to mobilize greater Democratic support?
joe rogan jordan peterson podcast spotify
Don't pretend you don't know what Joe Rogan is all about
The answer was simple: Many people in South Texas do not think of themselves as Latinos or immigrants – and they didn’t vote based on Trump’s rhetoric around either of those identities. Often referred to as “Tejanos,” many of these Texas residents have lived in the United States for six, seven and even eight generations.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/14/opinions/republican-latino-voters-gest/index.html
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