The Latino Vote and the 2022 Midterms

Oct 05, 2022

The Latino Vote and the 2022 Midterms

By Danny Sepulveda, SVP Platinum Advisors

Platinum Perspective

• Republicans should not bank on a significant nationwide rightward shift in the Latino vote. It isn’t there. But Democrats shouldn’t take a wide Latino margin for granted. There are important communities in important races that require more attention than they are receiving to produce the results in the Latino community that the Democrats need to retain the Senate and minimize House loses.
• In short, for both parties, spending the right amount of money, addressing the right issues, and having the right messengers will make the difference between victory in defeat in enough races to be a significant determining factor in whether Democrats can hold the Senate and mitigate losses in the House. Or from a Republican perspective, whether they can take both houses of Congress in 2022. Democrats still have an advantage with the Latino community, but the turn out effort will have to be strong to capitalize on it.

The Latino vote matters in this election more than most because of the concentration of the Latino community in key states and races that are contestable. It also matters because even in those races that are not contestable, for Democratic victories in Latino districts to contribute to statewide wins, the margins need to be large.

The media narrative that Democrats are experiencing an erosion of Latino support is false. The Latino registered vote nationwide remains solidly in favor of Democrats. And Democrats are performing well with Latinos in several key races. But even a small rightward shift in a tight race in Nevada and elsewhere could cost Democrats one or more Senate seats that are winnable with the right investment, messages, and messengers.

There is no homogenous “Latino Vote.” The challenge is that each state has unique set of Latino communities with a complex set of policy priorities, requires a different blend of targeted messaging, and wants to hear from messengers from within their community. Neither party has yet mastered this complexity and at this point it is anybody’s ball game.

Overview

There will be close to 35 million eligible Latino voters for the 2022 midterms. In 2018, that number was slightly less than 29 million. In 2018, 15.5 million of those eligible voters were registered to vote and 11.6 million voted. According to the National Association for Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) the 2018 Latino turnout constituted a historic high and a 73% increase over 2014.[i]

NALEO projects that the 2022 Latino voter turnout will match or come close to matching the 2018 turnout while non-Latino voter turnout is projected to decline slightly. They believe the constituency will have a particularly significant impact in Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada.

Because of projections like NALEO’s, ahead of the midterms next month, the examination and focus on Latinos as a potential swing vote in the 2022 midterms is more active than in any election before it. The intensified press attention to the Latino electorate is due to a variety of factors:

(1)??If Latinos are a swing vote and not a solidly Democrat constituency, it makes for an interesting story because it is counterintuitive. Historically, the press, politicians, and campaign professionals have largely considered the Latino vote to heavily favor Democrats regardless of effort to communicate with them and/or turn them out. Historical voting patterns indicate that this is largely true but trend lines since the Trump election of 2016 have ignited a debate.

(2)??The margins in majority Latino districts matter. A potential victory or loss in majority Latino communities and the vote margin in those districts will have significant implications for whether the House and/or Senate switch party control because the nation is so evenly divided politically, and races are won or lost on the margins in districts and statewide.

(3)??The Latino community and voting bloc is large and particularly important in some of the most heavily contested races. Senate races including Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and to a lesser extent Georgia and Florida, will be determined in part by how many people in the Latino electorate come out and how they vote. Several key House races fall into the same demographic calculus in multiple states.

The debate behind the discussion of the Latino vote and this midterm is around the following questions:

• Is the Latino vote really swinging right?
• Does it matter if the Latino vote is swinging right?
• Are the parties investing enough in turning out the Latino vote? Or, are the Democrats taking the Latino vote for granted?

Is the Latino vote really swinging to the right?

The media is enjoying asking the question. Articles with the following titles indicate that the answer is yes:

• “Latino Voters, Once Solidly Democratic, Split Along Economic Lines: Working-class Latino voters in particular are moving towards Republicans .”
• “Dems lose ground with Latino voters ahead of 2022 midterm elections: Latino support for Democrats down 13 points since 2018 midterms ”
• “Nevada Democrats see sign of a nightmare scenario: Latino voters staying home ”

The headlines imply a conclusion – Latinos are moving right, Democrats should be scared, and they will continue moving right if Democrats don’t do something about it. But the underlying data and the text of the stories themselves tell a different story:

• Democrats still hold a significant lead over Republicans in Latino communities, though not as significant as in 2016 or 2018.?Trend lines have moved right in terms of percentages of Latinos voting or leaning Republican but have plateaued and seemingly hit a floor for now.

According to the non-partisan Pew Research Center, Latino registered voters in 2022 favor Democrats by 67% to 33% support for Republicans. That’s a big margin, particularly in a tough economic climate. And that margin has not changed since 2019.[ii] While it is true that larger percentages than that supported Obama and Clinton, the Obama and Clinton coalitions relied on Latinos more than the Biden coalition did and we should remember that Biden won enough Latino votes to become President and hold the House and the Senate.

• Latinos are just as worried about inflation and crime as everyone else. The reasons that more working-class Latinos intend to vote for Republicans are the same as those that all working class people have expressed when proclaiming support for Republicans - inflation and crime. According to the Pew Report, 80% of Latino voters say the economy is a very important issue when deciding who to vote for in the coming midterms. The other top issues according to the poll split which party voters will favor – 71% are concerned about health care, 70% about violent crime and education, and 66% cite guns.
• The Democrats’ saving grace. To the degree that Democrats have a saving grace, it is that a majority of the Latinos Pew surveyed say Democrats care about them and work hard for their vote, far fewer say that of Republicans.

Does it matter if the Latino vote is swinging right, if even only slightly?

The answer to this question is yes for both parties. Even though the Democrats hold a large majority of support among Latino voters nationwide, races are run district by district, state by state. And to win in a state like Nevada or in multiple districts in Texas, Democrats need huge margins in the Latino community. Winning huge Latino margins in California, New York, and New Jersey doesn’t help Democrats win a Senate seat or a Governor’s race in a state that leans right. The reverse is true for Republicans, if they can tighten margins in the Latino community sufficiently, they do not need to win over a majority of those voters to win races.

Interestingly, the Dobbs decision and its repercussions are playing favorably for Democrats. Though considered a generally socially conservative community with strong religious affiliations, more than half say they do not want elected officials to pass restrictions on the procedure and only 16% say it should be illegal in all states.[iii] Younger Latinos support reproductive freedoms more than older Latino voters, and Latinos are a younger voting bloc than the rest of the voting population.

Mike Madrid and Chuck Rocha from The Latino Vote podcast - https://latinos.vote/ - argue convincingly that who runs campaigns matters, knowing the specific composition and values of any given district matters, and investing in races to maximizes potential margins matters both in those localities and for larger statewide races. Their arguments and evidence are in the spoken word rather than articles from which we can cite data but their on the ground knowledge and experience is worth hearing if the Latino vote interests you. They are particularly fired up about three races in Texas that are getting national attention.[iv] They believe that Democrats are not doing what they need to do in those specific races and that without those districts, they have no chance of winning the Governor’s race and risk feeding the narrative that Latinos are swinging away from them.

Are the Parties Investing Enough in the Latino Vote?

The answer to this question won’t be known until after the election is over. If Democrats hold the Senate and/or minimize losses in the House due to Latino voter turnout, then we will know they have spent enough to do so. If Republicans flip some majority Latino districts and or whittle down margins enough to win the Nevada Senate race or other key races, then we will know they have spent enough.

Money for campaigns is not limitless and political operations have to make hard choices as we head toward the end of October. Over indexing on spending in Latino communities on either side would be novel. And to the degree that spending is a proxy for how much you care about a community’s vote, it could eat into the saving grace of Democrats if Republicans decide to bet on Latinos for 2022.

If it were me, I would urge candidates on the Democratic side to err on the side of overspending in Latino communities in key Senate races through critical districts where Latinos are overrepresented relative to representation in the State as a whole. I would also recommend speaking to the specific concerns of those Latinos in those specific communities – speak to the economic concerns and highlight positions on health care, education, and gun safety. Democrats simply cannot afford to take Latinos for granted. But I am biased, I may have that opinion because I am Latino and a Democrat. If I were advising a Republican, I would give the same advice with a focus almost entirely on economic issues.

There is no genetic predetermination to a Latino being a Democrat or Republican. There is a historic tie to the party, but it is weaker than that of the African American community and labor unions. To the degree that Americans who are Latino tend to vote as a bloc will change and has changed relative to how much the other aspects of their lives matter to them as well - living in an urban vs. rural community, college educated vs. not, economic status, and religious affiliation. To the degree either party wants to make Latinos a key constituency for them, they will have to invest the resources to communicate that they care and communicate in a way that respects their diverse needs across multiple, diverse Latino communities.

[i] https://naleo.org/COMMS/PRA/2022/2_24_2022_-_NEF_PPT_-_2022_Midterms_Latino_Voter_Projections_Texas_-_Final.pdf

[ii] https://www.pewresearch.org/race-ethnicity/2022/09/29/most-latinos-say-democrats-care-about-them-and-work-hard-for-their-vote-far-fewer-say-so-of-gop/

[iii] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2022/08/25/is-abortion-policy-driving-latinos-towards-the-democratic-party/ ; https://time.com/6218416/latino-voters-abortion-immigration-democrats/

[iv] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/01/democrats-fall-of-roe-00059843