On November 9, 1984, the activist Cesar Chavez, Born into a settled Mexican family Arizonaaddressed the audience gathered at the Commonwealth Club, a California forum, with these words: “We have studied the future and that future belongs to us.”
He was referring to Latinos in the United States.
When Chavez uttered those words, American Latinos – whether immigrants or indigenous – They numbered 15 million people. 7% of the population.Four decades later, there are 65 million of them, representing 20% of the inhabitants of the world’s leading power, a third in states like Arizona or Nevada and more than half in cities like Miami, San Antonio or Tucson.
Furthermore, as the researcher explains in a telephone conversation with EL ESPAÑOL Jens Manuel KrogstadAccording to the Pew Research Center, Latinos are “the fastest-growing demographic group in the United States.” In other words, not only are they growing, they’re growing faster than other minorities. A growth, Krogstad adds, that is not so much due to immigration as to the high birth rates among those already living in the country.
The latter, which is growing rapidly, is very well illustrated by the electoral panorama of next November. Of the 65 million Latinos, 36 million will be able to vote if they wish, and among them, 22% will do so for the first time. Eight years ago, in the 2016 elections, “only” 27 million people were called to the polls.
In other words: Cesar Chavez was right. Or as he recently declared Jorge Ramos, the star presenter of Univisión, the largest Spanish-language channel in the country, to journalist Stephania Taladrid: “I have been saying for a decade that no one can reach the White House without the Latino vote.”
But that the Latino vote is not easy to dissect.
Although they have historically been associated with progressive currents, that is, Democratic Party, Experts note that the Republican Party has grown in popularity among Latinos over the past decade. In the 2016 election, for example, only 28 percent of voters turned out for Donald Trump. But four years later, that figure had jumped to 36 percent.
Aware of this, he himself was Trump, who invited Enrique Acevedo to his Florida mansion last fall, presenter of the Mexican channel Televisa, for a long interview broadcast by Univisión (Televisa merged with Univisión in 2022). An appearance that was preceded by the visit he made in June of last year to a famous Cuban restaurant in Miami called Versailles and that also preceded the one he made a few months ago to a winery in Harlem; a neighborhood of New York in which Spanish is increasingly spoken.
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre.
Reuters
“This is a diverse group in many ways,” says Krogstad, a Pew Research Center analyst. “Factors like country of origin, generation or religious beliefs can drive a notable difference in opinion.”
Country of origin is indeed usually the recurring example when it comes to expressing this diversity. “Cubans and Venezuelans, who are essentially political émigrés fleeing communist or dictatorial regimes, tend to vote for the Republican Party,” says Mike Madrid, a former adviser to the conservative party, in an essay entitled The Latin Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming DemocracyIn the opposite direction, he said, there would be voters of Mexican origin: 70% of them still opt for the Democratic Party.
Regarding the generational factor, Madrid says: “There are many reasons to believe that as Latinos age, graduate from college, own property, get married, get jobs in technology companies, white-collar jobs and those that require academic requirements, they are moving closer to the Republican Party.” Three of the last four congressional elections support his reasoning, he concludes.
THE Religious belief is not anecdotal either. “For an evangelical, the abortion issue is very important,” says Krogstad, referring to one of the Democratic Party’s main hobby horses. In other words: it is difficult for an evangelical Latino – and there are currently about 10 million of them – to choose the ballot of a pro-abortion candidate. A fact that the progressive party should take into account if the trend according to which Latinos are turning their backs on Catholicism, and that for this reason by 2030 more than half will declare themselves evangelical, proves to be true.
In ideological matters, Krogstad emphasizes that Their concerns are very similar to those of the average American voter.. And he cites the economy, health care, education and public safety (i.e. crime) as the most recurring issues in surveys of those sectors conducted by the Pew Research Center.
And the immigration?
The key issue in this election is also present among Latinos, but not as much as the Democratic Party thinks. That is to say: not exaggeratedly or even uniformly.
“Many Latin American leaders began their political careers around the immigrant rights movement in 2006, when the Democratic Party and the more moderate faction of the Republican Party concluded that fighting for immigration reform — including a path for millions of “undocumented immigrants” to obtain citizenship — was the best way to win Latino support,” historian Geraldo Cadava, author of the essay, explained a few days ago. The Hispanic Republican: The Making of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump, In an article published in The New Yorker. However, he adds, things have changed.
Today More Latinos Support Strict Border Control With Mexico and it is no coincidence that more than half of the 20,000 agents who make up the controversial Border Patrol belong to this demographic group.
He This does not mean that the Latino voter is against immigration.. The opposite. When we talk about the possibility of emigrating or providing facilities when obtaining a green card – the permanent residence card – the feeling is favourable. Partly because, as I have explained well Matt BarretoA Democratic Party pollster told Cadava that many of them have a relative who wants to settle in the United States or, if they are already in the country, want to regularize their situation. But when it comes to massive and uncontrolled immigration, the feeling that it needs to be controlled and channeled has grown considerably.
However, and despite the increasingly evident sympathies that the Republican Party arouses among Latino voters, To this day, the majority remains aligned with the Democratic Party. A majority which with Joe Biden at the front could be in danger but now, with Kamala Harris at the controls, settles down again.
“We did a poll in early July and another in early August and we saw a substantial shift in the Democratic Party candidate,” Krogstad says. “In July, 36% of registered Latinos said they supported Joe Biden, but a month later, with Kamala Harris already running, that level of support jumped to 52%.”
At Trump’s expense? No, Krogstad concludes. Trump remains more or less the same: about 36%. The support Harris won has been lost by a third: Robert Kennedy Jr. “In the July survey, 24 percent of registered Latinos supported Kennedy, and by August that number had dropped to 11 percent,” the analyst said.
