Saturday, September 17, 2022

Hispanics Are Finding a Home on the Right

I made the claim on VP yesterday that those, like our vice-president, who cynically insist that the border is secure while allowing millions of immigrants to cross it illegally have one of two goals in mind.

Either they're counting on the massive influx to give the Democratic party a massive majority in perpetuity or their hoping that the sheer volume of immigrants will so overload our institutions - schools, hospitals, courts, prisons, etc. - that our system will collapse under the weight.

It's possible, of course, that some are hoping for both outcomes.

Anyone who is skeptical of the above might try a thought experiment.

Imagine that everyone of these immigrants has sworn to vote Republican. What do you think the response of congressional Democrats would be? Would they not be demanding that the flow of migrants be stopped by whatever means necessary?

Actually, the thought experiment may not be too far from reality as this Wall Street Journal article by Aaron Zitner and Bryan Mena suggests:
A WSJ analysis shows that Latino communities drifted toward the Republican Party in the last presidential election. If the trend continues, it could mark a dramatic change for America’s two major political parties.

Latino voters are among the fastest-growing groups in the electorate, accounting for some 16 million voters in 2020—or more than 10% of the voter pool. Once a solidly Democratic bloc, Latino voters are emerging as a swing group available to both parties, with its voting preferences splitting along economic and class lines.

In 2020, Latino voters who backed one of the two major candidates gave Mr. Biden 63% of their vote, according to a detailed analysis by Catalist, a Democratic voter-data firm. That was 8 percentage points lower than Mr. Biden’s party had won four years earlier.

The movement away from Mr. Biden’s party was even larger—some 11 points—among Latinos who are working class, commonly defined as those without a four-year college degree.

Voters and analysts say the economic boom during much of Mr. Trump’s presidency, as well as today’s high inflation under Mr. Biden, have continued to lead to a more favorable view of the Republican Party and helped change the perception in many families that it’s socially unacceptable to consider backing GOP candidates.
This is all bad news for Democrats. If Hispanics continue to move to the right it could mean the end of the Democratic party as a dominant national force since Hispanics and African-Americans are an essential part of the Democratic base.
“The feeling that the Democratic Party almost by default is going to have the Hispanic vote—it’s not like that anymore,’’ said Ally Magalhaes, a Brazilian immigrant and aesthetician who until recently ran a spa a few miles from the Oronoz family’s home. She backed Mr. Trump in 2020 after previously voting for Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Ms. Magalhaes said faith and family were important to her—areas where she feels more aligned with Republicans. “The Republican Party is the one that represents that strongly, and that’s who we are going to be sticking with, if the Democratic Party continues to impose their progressive agenda,” she said.

She moved her two children to a charter school after local leaders considered adopting a sex-education plan that she found too explicit.

In those neighborhoods where Latino residents account for 70% or more of the population, President Biden carried 75% of the vote, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of election results at the census-tract level. That was 7 percentage points less than Democrats had won in 2016.

A Wall Street Journal survey conducted in late August found that Latino voters would pick a Democratic candidate for Congress over a Republican by 11 percentage points. That’s a narrower lead than the 34-point advantage Democrats held in 2018, according to AP VoteCast.

The Journal poll also found that working-class Latino voters are more open to backing Republican candidates this fall than are those with college degrees. Latino voters without a four-year degree picked a Democratic candidate over a Republican by 6 percentage points, while Democrats led by 26 points among Latino voters with college degrees.

If the vote shift proves durable, it could undermine Democrats’ belief that the nation’s growing racial and ethnic diversity, along with the party’s gains among white voters with college degrees, would propel it to dominance in national politics.

For Republicans, big gains among Latino voters could help them accomplish a goal that many in the party came to embrace during Mr. Trump’s presidency: becoming a multiracial party of the nation’s working class.
So, since almost 100% of the Hispanic immigrants pouring across the border are working class, how long will the shift to the right among these people continue before we no longer hear calls for a "path to citizenship," and instead start to hear calls from Washington Democrats to seal the border?