Republicans are holding onto a steady share of the Latino vote
in the Trump era. With a president who targets immigrants from Latin
America, some analysts predicted a Latino backlash against the GOP. But
it hasn’t happened. Data from AP’s VoteCast survey suggests Republicans
are holding on to support from Latino evangelicals and veterans. (AP
Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
There is a larger bloc of reliable
Republican Latinos than many think, as the GOP’s position among Latinos
in America has not weakened during the Trump administration — this,
despite presidential rhetoric against immigrants and the party’s shift
to the right on immigration.
In November’s elections, 32 percent
of Latinos voted for Republicans, according to AP VoteCast data. The
survey of more than 115,000 midterm voters — including 7,738 Latino
voters — was conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the
University of Chicago.
Other surveys also found roughly one-third
of Latinos supporting the GOP. Data from the Pew Research Center and
from exit polls suggest that a comparable share, about three in 10
Latino voters, supported Trump in 2016. That tracks the share of Latinos
supporting Republicans for the last decade.
The VoteCast data
shows that, like white voters, Latinos are split by gender — 61 percent
of men voted Democratic in November, while 69 percent of women did. And
while Republican-leaning Latinos can be found everywhere in the country,
two groups stand out as especially likely to back the GOP —
evangelicals and veterans.
Evangelicals comprised about
one-quarter of Latino voters, and veterans were 13 percent. Both groups
were about evenly split between the two parties. Mike Madrid, a
Republican strategist in California, said those groups have reliably
provided the GOP with many Latino votes for years.
“They stick and
they do not go away,” Madrid said. Much as with Trump’s own core white
voters, attacks on the president and other Republicans for being
anti-immigrant “just make them dig in even more,” he added.
The
Rev. Sam Rodriguez of Sacramento, California, one of Trump’s spiritual
advisers, said evangelical Latinos have a clear reason to vote
Republican. “Why do 30 percent of Latinos still support Trump? Because
of the Democratic Party’s obsession with abortion,” Rodriguez said.
“It’s life and religious liberty, and everything else follows.”
Pedro Gonzalez has faith in Donald Trump and his party.
The
55-year-old Colombian immigrant is a pastor at an evangelical church in
suburban Denver. Initially turned off by Trump in 2016, he’s been
heartened by the president’s steps to protect religious groups and
appoint judges who oppose abortion rights. More important, Gonzalez sees
Trump’s presidency as part of a divine plan.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Gonzalez said of the president. “He was put there.”
Some
conservative Latinos say their political leanings make them feel more
like a minority than their ethnicity does. Irina Vilariño, 43, a Miami
restaurateur and Cuban immigrant, said she had presidential bumper
stickers for Sen. John McCain, Mitt Romney and Trump scratched off her
car. She said she never suffered from discrimination growing up in a
predominantly white south Florida community, “but I remember during the
McCain campaign being discriminated against because I supported him.”
The
2018 election was good to Democrats, but Florida disappointed them.
They couldn’t convince enough of the state’s often right-leaning
Cuban-American voters to support Sen. Bill Nelson, who was ousted by the
GOP’s Spanish-speaking Gov. Rick Scott, or rally behind Democrats’
gubernatorial candidate, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who lost to
Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis.
Still, in the rest of the country,
there were signs that pleased Democrats. Latinos voted at high rates in
an election that saw record-setting turnout among all demographic
groups. Latinos normally have among the worst midterm turnout rates, and
while official data won’t be available for months, a number of
formerly-Republican congressional districts in California and New Mexico
flipped Democratic.
That’s why Republicans shouldn’t take comfort
in being able to consistently win about one-third of Latinos, said
Madrid. They’re still losing two-thirds of an electorate that’s being
goaded into the voting booth by Trump.
“That is contributing to
the death spiral of the Republican Party — even if it holds at 30
percent,” Madrid said. “That’s a route to death, it’s just a slower
one.”
Gonzalez, the pastor, sees the trend in Colorado. He
distributed literature across Spanish-speaking congregations supporting
Republican gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton, who was crushed by
Democratic Rep. Jared Polis as the GOP lost every race for statewide
office.
Gonzalez understands the anger among some Latinos at the
GOP and Trump for what he says is a false impression of a solely
hardline immigration stance. “In the community that is not informed,
that is following the rhetoric of the media, there’s a view that Donald
Trump is a bad guy,” Gonzalez said. Evangelicals “understand that he’s
there to defend values.”
