The elusive Latino vote seems to continue to perplex pundits and strategists across
our country.
Every morning the day after an election you wake up and hear surprise at oh my goodness
how could Latinos have done this?
When we talk about the Black vote, the Latino vote, the Asian vote, we are actually falling
into a biological definition of race.
Gender matters, class matters, sexuality matters, and all those things need to be taken in consideration.
Candidates of both parties have been guilty of this idea that Latinos are either natural
Republicans or natural Democrats and to me that suggests a deep unfamiliarity with who Latinos
are and who we have been.
Latinos make up nearly 18% of the population and are among the fastest growing group of
voters in the U.S.
But Latinos have always been here and have always voted across both party lines according
to their unique life experiences and needs.
Geography and national origin tend to coincide.
So Mexicans tend to live in the southwest, Cubans and Puerto Ricans tend to live in New
York and Florida, so all of that matters in terms of understanding their politics.
It should surprise no one that there are Latinos vote Republican, especially in places like Florida.
About 40 years ago, there was a shift from voting primarily for Democrats to primarily
for Republicans after Ronald Regan ran on a platform of anti-socialism.
The fact of the matter is in every presidential election since Richard Nixon won the election
in 1972 between a quarter and a third of Latinos have voted for the Republican candidate.
And so I think what is interesting about that is that support has been remarkably durable
even as the Republican party has shifted far to the right.
What the Trump campaign did in Florida and other places is they associated Biden with
socialism.
And that is going to resonate very strongly with people who bring with them an antipathy
toward that ideology.
You know this idea that the Republican party even with a candidate like Trump was able
to expand its support among Latinos, it really cuts against that idea that demographic change
is going to lead to more and more political victories for Democrats.
Beyond platforms and basic messaging, Latino activists blame both parties for a lack of
true investment in Latino communities beyond the general election season.
In every experience that I have had with a campaign, mobilization of voters of color
is always an afterthought, its always if they have a little money left over, it's always
something you do at the last few minutes.
Instead they begin to pivot to Latino outreach during the general election, just five months
out from November, and think that they can win the Latino constituency by simply google
translating their website, or releasing one Spanish radio ad, and they call that their
quote un quote Latino outreach.
Because of this, Latino grassroots organizers have stepped in to fill the gap.
In Texas, nearly half a million new Latino voters turned out as a result of grassroots
work.
Arizona, a state that Trump won in 2016, flipped in 2020, in many ways due to 10 years of local
Latino organizing.
That relationship that we built with our voters was able to get us across the finish line
this election.
Because we weren't dropping in for the first time, we weren't some stranger that was knocking
on a door during a scary pandemic, we were familiar, we were trusted.
Political pundits and strategists are already examining what each campaign did well in 2020,
and working to apply that to the 2022 midterms and beyond.
The main takeaway coming from organizers on the ground is simple.
The message to the establishment is you have to put in the work.
We are not a given.
Neither political party in this country needs to take the Latino vote for granted.
All Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, would be well served to try to really understand
and engage with Latinos so that we are not surprised again in 2024.