🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Are Latino voters moving to the right?
The Latino electorate reflects much of America's Latino communities: incredibly diverse and rapidly growing. The number of U.S. Latino voters grew to 34.5 million in 2022. That's up almost 5 million from 2018. No other group is growing this fast. Our voters are as diverse as our community, which has always been made up of liberal, moderate, and conservative Latinos whose politics vary according to region, background, socioeconomic status, and life experiences.
As diverse as Latinas and Latinos are, we know that Democrats better reflect the community's values and interests—good-paying jobs and a robust economy, access to affordable health care, immigration reform, quality education, a clean environment, and ultimately, opportunity.
In fact, a new Univision poll further supports the claim that Democrats better serve the Latino community's needs. The poll found Latino voters support Democrats on many of their key policy issues. Even Latino Republicans support much of the Democratic policy agenda. Seventy-two percent of Latino voters support canceling student debt, 77 percent support creating a path to citizenship, 90 percent support allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices on prescription drugs—something Democrats achieved without GOP votes—and 72 percent support banning assault rifles. Another issue that emerged as a major concern for Latinos was inflation; and the data indicated a larger number of Latino voters trust Democrats to solve the problem than Republicans.
Given the results of this poll, and polling that suggests the Democratic Party's policy agenda better represents the values of most Latino communities, it's no surprise that the majority of Latino voters have favored Democratic candidates over the GOP for decades. In 2022, data from Pew Research suggested that Hispanic voters supported Democratic candidates by a 60 percent to 39 percent margin in the 2022 midterm elections. The fact is Latino voters aren't running to the GOP. Like any other non-homogeneous group, we have people at both ends of the spectrum, but based on the data, the vast majority vote Democrat.
What we have always known is that Latino voters are persuasion voters. Candidates must give us reasons to vote by talking about the issues that matter to our community because demography is not destiny. Like any other group, Latinos must be engaged and mobilized to increase voter turnout—and we must be engaged early, through continued investment, and in a culturally competent manner.
What this means is that organizers and candidates can't wait until the final hour to reach this election-determining voting bloc—we need to be messaging ahora on the hard-fought victories by Democrats for the Latino community. If Democrats want Latino voters to show up for them in November, they need to make clear why their platform directly puts food on their tables, money in their pockets, and resources in their schools. Latino voters want candidates who demonstrate results and deliver on their campaign promises, not ones that pander during get-out-the-vote season in a last-ditch effort.
What are effective ways to do this? For starters, we need to be talking about the American Rescue Plan. This law, passed by Congressional Democrats, lowered Latino unemployment from 8.5 percent in January 2021 to 4.3 percent in June 2023. We also need to be talking about how Democrats banded together and forced Republicans to work with them to keep our government open, keeping millions of people from having their businesses put at risk, their jobs from being furloughed, and disrupting vital disaster relief programs. And finally, we need to be talking about how the right's co-opting of our court system will leave generations of Latinos vulnerable to having their rights stolen.
When Latino voters hear from Democrats—they vote for Democrats. Don't count on a Latino Red Wave—it's a Latino Red Mirage.
Sindy Benavides is the president and CEO of Latino Victory.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
