Washington, D.C. – Even CNN admits that things are not looking good for the Democrats. Hispanic voters are running as fast and as far away from them as they possibly can.
CNN: Democrats’ problem with Hispanic voters isn’t going away as GOP gains seem to be solidifying
The Democratic Party’s early 2000s dream of an emerging majority based on a diversifying electorate has run into reality. Democrats lost the 2016 presidential election, and they barely won in 2020. Part of their problem was declining support among White voters.
But the 2020 election also pointed to another problem: Hispanic voters (who are growing as a portion of the electorate) moving toward the Republican Party. Recent polling — and now this week’s Texas primaries — show that these Republican gains don’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
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Put another way, the shift in Republican primary participation in those 16 heavily Hispanic counties was nearly three times the statewide shift.
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This 5-point shift toward Republicans among Hispanics is in line with the 5-point shift we see among voters overall — Republicans ahead by 2 points on the generic congressional ballot, compared with losing the national House vote by 3 points in 2020.
The key thing to realize, though, is that Democrats did worse — and Republicans did better — among Hispanic voters in 2020 House races relative to the national vote than in any House election since 2004. So while not losing additional ground is not a bad thing for Democrats, it’s not a good thing either.
The Biden factor
If anything, the picture gets better for Republicans when you examine Biden’s popularity. Across the CNN, Fox and Quinnipiac polls this year, the President’s net approval rating averages +2 points with Hispanic Americans. That’s 17 points better than his net approval rating with voters overall in these polls (-15 points).
In the 2020 election, Biden’s margin with Hispanic voters was about 23 points better than it was overall.
So compared with 2020, Biden is doing worse with Hispanics relative to how he is doing with voters overall. That’s notable given that earlier in his presidency, Biden was doing significantly better among Hispanics relative to how he was doing overall and compared with how he did in 2020.
This fits with an analysis from FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley, which found that Biden’s approval rating had fallen disproportionately among Hispanics over the course of his presidency.
The fact that the political preferences of Hispanic Americans are jumping around may get at something larger: Their votes are up for grabs more so than the average voter’s. While they may still be more Democratic-leaning, both parties have a good chance of making up ground among the Hispanic electorate.
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