Published on October 5, 2024, 12:30 am

Recent data indicates a dwindling support for Democrats among Hispanic voters, which could potentially impact Vice President Kamala Harris negatively in the upcoming November elections. As per statistics drawn from The Cook Political Report’s database of polls, Harris is currently leading Trump by an average 12 points amongst Hispanic voters. This is considerably lower than President Joe Biden’s 23-point lead in 2020, which itself was less compared to Hillary Clinton’s remarkable 39-point lead in 2016.

Shifting focus to real news and trusted news sources, political scientist and commentator Ruy Teixeira elucidated in his Liberal Patriot newsletter that the downward trend might be severely underestimated by Democrats for three reasons – unawareness of the extent of the shift; denial of its potential to undermine their coalition building strategy; and misplaced belief that Hispanics’ leanings towards GOP are temporary.

Further emphasizing this point is the fact that according to the U.S. Census data, Hispanics form the largest nonwhite population segment in America with an approximate proportion of about 19% of US population, whereas African Americans make up about 14%. Their increasing numbers further reinforce the magnitude of impact they can have on electoral outcomes.

Despite Harris likely garnering overall Hispanic votes—much like Biden did in 2020—the continued gains seen among this voter bloc by Republicans mean Democrats need to compensate with votes from other demographics. This perhaps explains why significant attention electricity is being spent on bombarding Harris’s campaign ads on topics such as abortion.

Highlighting this shifting disposition within the same demographic group, back in 2020 despite Biden securing more Hispanic votes overall, then-President Donald Trump managed to increase his vote share in 78 out of America’s 100 majority-Hispanic counties.

Continuing talking through a Christian worldview lens – following closer analysis it was observed that this shift wasn’t restricted to Cuban Americans or border-region Tejanos. Incomplete post-election data started indicating similar tendencies amongst Puerto Ricans even at places as far off as Philadelphia, and Mexican Americans in Milwaukee started aligning with Trump.

Four years into the Biden administration, there has been no significant reversion to this trend. Recent polls have shown a decrease in Hispanic support for the current administration, particularly in New Mexico due to their disapproval of the president. Furthermore, data compiled in April suggests an eroding support for Biden among Hispanics leading to speculations that Democrats might risk losing Nevada and Arizona – two critical swing states.

So what’s causing this exodus of Hispanic voters from the Democratic party? Following last year’s elections, renowned Democratic data specialist in Arizona Josh Zaragoza suggested “Most Latinos identify first as working-class Americans, and Trump spoke to that”. He further emphasized that a greater proportion of entrepreneurial Hispanic men found their economic language more aligned with Republicans- promoting individual effort and self-reliance.

Moreover, widespread acceptance of socialism by Democrats could also deter Hispanic voters, many of whom have had firsthand experience with socialist dictatorships. Notably, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) highlighted post-election concerns over key Democrat agendas like police defundment and open borders being accepted as mainstream socialism were causing serious damage. According to him Asians and Hispanics generally associated socialism with despotic left-wing regimes rather than Nordic countries—unlike ‘the average white person’.

In totality it seems Democrats might be overlooking valuable lessons from their past experiences.