Ruy Teixeira: Hispanic voters are still drifting toward the GOP

Ruy Teixeira has written about this topic many times. Today he has an opinion piece in the Washington Post arguing that the Hispanic drift toward the GOP is still happening. He opens with a review of just how significant this shift was in 2020:

Trump improved his performance among Hispanics by 20 points in Wisconsin, 18 points in Texas and Nevada, 12 points in Pennsylvania and Arizona and among urban Hispanics in Chicago, New York and Houston. In Chicago’s predominantly Hispanic precincts, Trump improved his raw vote by 45 percent over 2016.

In 2022, Teixeira writes there was no further evidence of a continued shift to the right but also no evidence Democrats had regained any of that lost ground. So how are things shaping up for 2024?

Since then, polls consistently find that Hispanic voters prefer Republicans to Democrats on inflation and handling the economy. Nearly all — 86 percent — Hispanics say economic conditions are only fair or poor and about three-quarters say the same thing about their personal financial situation. By 2 to 1 they say President Biden’s policies are hurting, not helping, them and their families. In a just-released 6,000 respondent poll from the Survey Center on American Life (SCAL) on evolving party coalitions, almost two-thirds believe Biden has accomplished not that much or little or nothing during his time in office…

Beneath this discontent is an emerging gulf between the cultural outlook of many Hispanics and the increasingly left-wing values of the Democratic Party. In the SCAL survey, half of Hispanics think Democrats are “too extreme” and slightly more than half think Democrats don’t share their values.

Again, this isn’t the first time Teixeira has touched on the idea of a cultural gap between progressives and Hispanics. Last year he wrote that Hispanics were essentially “normie voters.”

It is becoming clearer and clearer that Democrats have seriously erred by lumping Hispanics in with “people of color” and assuming they embraced a litany of liberal causes around race and other issues that are dear to the hearts of Democratic activists. This was a flawed assumption. In reality, Hispanic voters are overwhelmingly an upwardly mobile, patriotic population with practical and down to earth concerns focused on jobs, the economy, health care, effective schools and public safety.

In short, they are normie voters. And like other normie voters, if they feel Democrats are falling short on the things normie voters care about, they are more than willing to punish the party they hold responsible.

Joe Biden was supposed to be a normie president but it hasn’t really worked out that way. Biden has become the champion of all things left-wing. It’s not just that he supports unions and abortion rights. He’s also gone from voting for the Defense of Marriage Act to being a champion of trans rights as well. He’s also been pushing hard on the ideas of systemic racism and equity. Culturally, Biden has more in common with the progressive left than the center these days. As Teixeira points out, that’s not where a majority of Hispanics are these days.

Take the issue of racism in our society. Is racism “built into our society, including into its policies and institutions” or does racism “come from individuals who hold racist views, not from our society and institutions?” In the SCAL survey, by 60 to 39 percent, Hispanics chose the latter view rather than the received wisdom in Democratic circles that racism is baked into society and institutions.

None of this means that Republicans are guaranteed to improve their position with Hispanics in the next election. What it does mean, Teixeira suggests, is that Democrats can’t assume this group is behind them. That means they’re no longer just trying to turn out voters they know are with them. Instead, they’re going to have to win over voters and get them to turn out. As the Democratic party continues to move to the left, the job of convincing them to support the party is only going to get harder.