Latinos are already Republicans, Ronald Reagan used to say, they just don’t know it yet.
That ancient but insightful cliche hovers over the 2024 election. True, Joe Biden has already beaten Donald Trump once, and since then, the apparently inevitable Republican nominee has been indicted on 91 criminal charges in four different cases.
Still, alarm bells keep ringing. And one of the loudest warns that Latino voters, the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic group, are moving steadily away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans. If the next election is as close as the last two — and it probably will be — those voters could play a pivotal role, particularly in swing states like Arizona and Nevada.
“There are some indications, at this early stage of the cycle, that the GOP or Trump would do better with Latino voters in 2024 than they did in 2020,” writes Equis, a research consortium that studies the demographic. “They remain one of the great wildcards in U.S. elections.”
In 2016, Latinos favored Hillary Clinton over Trump by 38 points, 66 to 28, according to exit polls. In 2020, the Democrats’ advantage shrank to 32 points, 65 to 33. In last year’s congressional elections, their margin plunged to 21 points, 60 to 39.
There are many complex reasons for this shift, but one is pretty simple: Democrats have often taken Latinos for granted, lumping them in with Blacks as “people of color” and assuming their loyalty. But in fact, Latinos often resemble other immigrant groups — like, say, Italians or Koreans — more than Black Americans. Moreover, Latinos come from many different countries and cultures, and some have been here for several generations, integrating and assimilating.
“The idea of ‘unidad’ — Latin unity — not all Latinos buy into that,” Sergio Garcia-Rios, a Cornell University political scientist, tells CNN. “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.”
Indeed, as time passes, Latinos don’t necessarily identify as “people of color” as a racial minority. Justin Gest, the author of several books on ethnicity, writes for CNN: “As Latinos settle and integrate … (they) increasingly embrace an expanded sense of white identity in the way earlier light-skinned ethnic groups have over the course of U.S. history. Already, 60% of U.S.-born Latinos self-identify as white — white Hispanics — on U.S. census surveys.”
Many Latinos use the word “values” to explain their drift to the Republicans, and one example is a deep antipathy to the idea of defunding the police advanced by some liberal Democrats, a concept that is particularly resented in border areas where an influx of undocumented immigrants has disrupted communities.
Ruy Teixeira, a political demographer, tells NPR that when “the ultra-progressive wing of the Democratic Party (starts) privileging criminal justice reform over public safety,” it alienates many Latinos. “People want to be safe from crime, and that includes a lot of nonwhite voters.”
Texas State Rep. Ryan Guillen, a former Democrat from the Rio Grande Valley, recently joined the Republican Party and explained: “Something is happening in south Texas, and many of us are waking up to the fact that the values of those in Washington, D.C., are not our values, not the values of most Texans. The ideology of defunding the police, of destroying the oil and gas industry and the chaos at our border is disastrous for those of us who live here in south Texas.”
Like many immigrants before them, Latinos prize the virtues of hard work and self-reliance and see those values reflected in the Republican Party. Many are also small business owners and respond to the GOP message of less regulation and lower taxes.
“Democrats have lots of real reasons they should be worried,” Joshua Ulibarri, a Democratic strategist who has researched Latino men, said to the Times. “They look at us and say: We believe we work harder, we want the opportunity to build something of our own, and why should we punish people who do well?”
As Roman Catholics or Evangelical Protestants, Latinos often differ from liberal orthodoxy on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. “We’re very faith-based, family-oriented down here in south Texas,” Cassy Garcia, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress, said to the Christian Science Monitor. “I don’t think people realized that (Republican) values are their values. … They’ve just always voted Democrat — but it’s not your ‘abuela’s’ party anymore.”
As more Latinos share her grievances, and discover Reagan’s adage, this “wildcard” vote could make life increasingly perilous for Democrats.
(Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at stevecokie@gmail.com.)
