This polling on the Hispanic vote is a mixed bag but it does refute the conventional wisdom that the Democrats are massively losing Latinos. The numbers haven’t really changed much at all:
Heading into the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans have been riding a wave of positive press about their gains among Hispanic voters as Democrats fret about hemorrhaging support from the fast-growing demographic.
But while Democrats clearly have a problem, the GOP’s growing support among Latinos is less dramatic than some headlines suggest, according to a new poll conducted by a top Latino Democratic pollster and underwritten by a conservative Spanish-language network.
About 48 percent of Hispanics nationwide consider themselves Democrats, and only 23 percent identify as Republican, the poll found. Hispanic voters give President Joe Biden a positive job-approval rating, 48 percent to 29 percent, in contrast to disapproval of 54 percent to 44 percent among registered voters overall in the most recent NBC News poll.
By a margin of 10 percentage points, they said their opinion of the administration has improved in the past year, while a third said their opinion hasn’t changed.
But it’s not really a rosy result:
Still, the poll bears numerous warning signs for Democrats. By a double-digit margin, more Hispanic Democrats are considering leaving their party compared to Hispanic Republicans. Such potential party-switchers are mainly becoming independents or third-party voters — and they also tend to line up more with Republicans on some issues.
Overall, Hispanic voters are more likely than not to think the country is moving in the wrong direction, by a margin of 5 percentage points, according to the poll. Also by a margin of 5 percentage points, a majority agreed with the statement “The Democratic Party has been kidnapped by progressives.” Most opposed vaccination mandates. On each of these, independents aligned more with Republicans than Democrats.
“The results showed good news, but not great news, for the Republican Party and conservative candidates,” Jorge Arrizurieta, the president of the Americano network, wrote in a polling memo obtained by NBC News.
“We confirmed what we thought might be true: Hispanic voters are moving toward the center-right, but continuing this trend will require engagement by the party and its candidates,” Arrizurieta wrote. “Republicans must show up in the Hispanic community.”
Arrizurieta and Americano officials wouldn’t comment on the poll. Neither would pollster Eduardo Gamarra, a Democrat and professor at Florida International University in Miami, who conducted the bilingual survey from Feb. 20 to March 11 of 1,500 Hispanics drawn from 15 Latino-heavy states. It reported a margin of error of +/- 3.5 points.
The poll, one of the largest samples of Hispanic voters taken in recent months, provides both a blueprint for conservative outreach efforts like Americano’s, as well as a more complete picture of the challenges both parties face in courting the demographic.
Chuck Rocha, a Texas-based Democrat who specializes in Latino outreach, said the poll confirms what he has seen nationwide: Republicans aren’t making massive gains.
But they don’t need to, Rocha said, because Hispanic voters are a part of the Democratic Party’s base, so the more Republicans eat into Latino margins — even if it’s just a few points — the more it can make a difference in state or congressional races in California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada or Florida, where sizable Latino populations live.
“For the first 20 years of my 32-year career, Republicans didn’t spend a dime on Latinos in Spanish,” Rocha said. “But then they realized they can get 2, 3, 5 or 10 more points, and they’ve wised up, and Democrats were caught on their heels.”
Trump made a difference in 2020 but it’s unclear whether that will hold going forward:
That surprise came into sharp focus in 2020, when President Donald Trump improved his margins among Latino voters nationwide, compared to his performance in 2016. The gains were most notable along the Texas border, home to many Mexican Americans, and in Florida, which has a mix of Puerto Rican and Cuban American and other South and Central American voters.
Asked whether “the Republican Party today has become Donald Trump’s Party,” Hispanic voters agreed by 56 percent to 17 percent, the poll found.
I don’t know if that’s necessarily a positive for the GOP, actually. Some of those people may not think that’s such a great idea.
However:
Trump also marginally topped all other potential 2024 presidential candidates when respondents were asked an open-ended question about whom they would like to win the White House. Trump’s name was volunteered by 20 percent of respondents. Former first lady Michelle Obama was the second most named, at 19 percent, followed by Biden, at about 18 percent.
“This is a more significant finding for Republicans,” pollster Eduardo Gamarra wrote in an executive summary of the survey he conducted, noting that apart from Trump, not a single candidate including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “could muster over 10%.”
They named Michelle Obama just out of the blue? That’s interesting. But it’s also interesting that Trump and Biden are actually very close. If the Dems don’t ignore this part of their base they can stop the bleeding.