When I studied political science at UCLA at the end of the 1980s, a question that sparked hot debate was about the growing the Latino vote: Which party would they eventually settle on? Of course, the question itself is an enormous error, since Latinos are a large and diverse group, but still we argued over which party was better positioned to woo them overall and many of our professors leaned towards the Republicans, because, the argument went, Latino voters were mostly Catholic and therefore socially conservative.
Flash forward 30 years to a Trump presidency fixated on constructing wall to keep out, among others, the 'rapists' that Mexicans are sending across the border and it defies common sense to imagine Latino Americans wanting to have anything to do with this Republican Party, let alone vote for them. Yet, these people aren't universally repulsed by Trump, in fact, many–perhaps even enough for a 2020 win—are even embracing him.
Let's start with the data. In January, a colleague at the Universidad Europea asked me if I had seen the poll that showed that 50% of Latino voters approved of Trump. I laughed and said that's not possible and asked him to send me the link, which he did. It turned out to be the well-respected PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll and the Latino figure got a lot of headlines because Trump himself tweetedabout it. So much, that they had to debunk Trump's analysis: the poll was aimed at getting a general approval rating of Trump and had a good sample of 1,023 respondents. But only153 of those polled were Latinos(not to mention, only English was used), giving that cohort within the poll a very wide (9.9%) margin of error.
So, beware if you want to slice this piece off and use it on its own because the figure could really be as low as 40% and as high as 60%. And while Trump cited a 19 point jump from the previous year (from who knows which poll) the real jump was 23 points, but again, that's with about 10% up or down. In fact, this made a great case study to kick off my public opinion class this semester since it's a good lesson in reading the fine print of these studies.
While this figure is shaky due to the low sample size there is no denying that Trump has a solid base of Latino support, even if it isn't a majority. He won 28% of the Latino vote in 2016, about 10 points higher than exit polls predicted. These might seem like low numbers, especially given that since George W. Bush's win in 2004, conventional wisdom has insisted that Republican presidential candidates need about 40% of the Latino vote in order to win the White House. Yet, due to the electoral college math, Trump was able to do so with 12% less than that in 2016. This is extremely important to understanding what can happen in 2020.
In a recent analysis for Politico, David S. Bernstein writes that Hillary Clinton could have won both Florida and Michigan had she been able to win just 3% more of the Latino vote in those two states. So, very small numbers of Latino votes can translate into wins for Republicans whereas Democrats have staked their entire strategy on winning very large percentages of the Latino vote. If Trump is able to get anywhere closer to that magical 40% of Latino voters in 2020, it would assure him another four years in the White House.
That brings us to the million dollar question: is there really an upward trend of Latino support for Trump? While Trump's approval rating seemed to be rebounding towards the 40% mark in February in the Politico-Morning Consult poll, it has since declined. But Latinos are overall much more favorable to Trump than black voters, generally hovering around 30-40% and 15-25% respectively. In fact, the 35% is about the average we see in terms of Latino support for Trump across many polls, from the Economist/YouGov poll to The Hill to Reuters/Ipsos. Again, while 35% might seem like a bad number—it means that most of the other 65% disapprove—it is a very good number for Trump if (and it's a big if) it translates into votes.
The trillion dollar question is why so many Latinos are able to embrace this man who has been so dismissive and insulting towards them as a group. But then, we're talking about 29 million eligible voters,11% of the total vote in 2018, so lumping them into some sort of homogenous group is ridiculous. The most compelling reason is still centered around social conservatism. Many Latinos simply find issues such as abortion and taxes more important than immigration. Also, a growing share of Latinos are evangelicals, Trump's most ardent supporters.
More importantly, immigration and the wall isn't the only hot-button issue for voters and Latinos are no different. Trump's handling of Venezuela, guided by Senator Marco Rubio, is gaining him support among many Venezuelan-Americans as well as Cuban-Americans and therefore already tightening up the 2020 race in Florida. Republicans in California lost most Latino support during the1990s by putting forward bills such as proposition 187 which would have denied non-emergency health care, public education, and other state services to illegal immigrants, which was found unconstitutional. But they've recently elected Jessica Patterson, a 38-year old Latina, as their new state part chair. This decades-long fight for the Latino vote is far from over and is positioning them to be kingmakers of 2020.
This article was published in Spanish in El Español.