Latino voter surge holds lessons for 2020

[Algernon Moncrieff]

UC Berkeley

Why couldn’t Latinos hand wins to Democrats Beto O’Rourke of Texas and Andrew Gillum of Florida?

I study Latino civic engagement. In my assessment, congressional redistricting intended to suppress minority votes and high Republican turnout were the primary reasons — not low Latino support.

In Texas, Latinos requested 365 percent more early and absentee ballots than in 2014, Catalist data show. Florida saw a 129 percent increase. In contrast, in California — which this year had a handful of highly competitive congressional races but no competitive statewide races — early and absentee ballots requested by Latinos still were up almost 50 percent over 2014.

Those numbers show that when candidates and campaigns engage Latinos and focus on the issues they care about, Latinos will show up at the polls — an opportunity Democrats and Republicans alike missed in the 2014 and 2016 elections.

[LoverofDawgz]

1. they're not monolithic

As we see in NM, very Democratic, same in the LA basin. In eastern California, not so much.
In Florida many older of Latinos are still Republicans. Same in Texas though it's changing, and of those who are not, not enough are voting. Republicans might not hold more than a district or two in West Texas if they'd turn out.

I've studied it some too although I suspect you are far more versed, but it is my understanding that Latino's are most concerned with issues of working families, education for their children and so forth and not particularly attuned to other issues that many left-leaning voters are. They're also a very religious population so I think some of the perception that Democrats are hostile to religion (Christianity) is not helping . Truly I think that last point rather than racism has been the GOP's biggest winning strategy.