The fierce battle for the Latino vote in the US

This article was written by Caroline Conejero for Hoy, and can be found in Spanish on their website here.

During this month the Hispanic Heritage has been celebrated in the United States. Numerous public events, cultural events, and colorful parades throughout the country reflect the enormous diversity of the Latin American world. These are days when prominent public officials, endorsers of popular brands and, this election year, hundreds of candidates in the campaign rush to dance salsa, munch on tacos, rub shoulders with Latino personalities and utter the well-known slogans in Spanish.

Aware of its significant economic weight and growing cultural power, the largest minority electorate in the US, 19% of the population, allows itself to be loved, knowing that its vote can make a difference in the balance of power in the Senate and House of Representatives in the crucial elections on November 8. The so-called intermediate elections where Democrats and Republicans settle their presence in the main institutions of the country, as well as in numerous state and local positions. Joe Biden's ability to govern in the remainder of his term in the White House will depend on the final distribution.

However, for Latinos courtship always arrives at the last minute. Cycle after election cycle, Hispanic political consultants and leaders call on Democratic campaigns to focus on the issues that concern their communities, and time and time again, they warn that ignoring them has and will continue to have consequences. This year it has been Javier Palomarez, president and executive director of the US Hispanic Business Council, who has ordered the parties not to approach the Hispanic community with "false advertising campaigns", which he calls "Hispanic exploitation", because they are not "will lead nowhere."

The economy is the electoral priority for the entire world, and therefore also for Latinos, followed by security and gun violence, climate change, education and immigration. In fact, it is the way of approaching the economic crisis and not the migratory conflicts that can decant 20% of the undecided vote in favor of one party or the other. “We are like all other American families,” Palomarez explains. “The Hispanic community is facing high interest rates, high gas prices, and record inflation, and these are the issues that are front and center. And right now and historically it has been the Republican party that has focused on economic issues. I think it's a very natural trend, and it will continue to be so until things improve economically."

Democrats and Republicans have mobilized in recent years an intense electoral procession, albeit belated and chaotic, to attract a segment of the electorate traditionally neglected and, for the most part, ignored. The neglect shown by electoral campaigns to educate their candidates and strategists about the broad racial, cultural and linguistic diversity often misses the reality that Latinos are not a monolithic voting bloc. And that the enormous differences and cultural dynamics - sometimes even competitive with each other - that make up the world of Latinos require, as with other electoral groups, unique and disparate communication strategies.

Invest in the campaign

“Campaigns have to be intentional, culturally competent, and done in a language that the electorate can understand. This includes materials, ads, and strategies that resonate with Latino voters. That investment has not been made by either of the two parties," Rodrigo Domínguez-Villegas, director of research at the Latino Institute of Politics at UCLA University in Los Angeles, told this newspaper.

Although the Democratic party has made more investment, the spending of the parties in attracting the Hispanic vote is generally still low, adds Domínguez-Villegas. "Most campaign committees continue to be led by white men, and when Latinos are not at the helm of the organizations that run them, these campaigns are the weakest."

There are many examples, but perhaps the most notable of all was seen in the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders in 2020. He placed Chuck Rocha, one of the great Latino political analysts, as one of his senior positions, and his presence was noted: the result it was a large turnout of Hispanics in the primaries that gave Sanders victory in Nevada.

Traditionally it has been assumed that the vote of this group goes to the Democrats, but the Republicans have obtained important gains in the last electoral cycles. A recent poll (NBC News/Telemundo) confirms this, showing the Democratic preference of 54% of Hispanic voters and 33% in the case of the Republican. The difference, yes, amounts to 21 points, but it is half of what existed in 2012.

Trump's 2020 Republican campaign got an early start in recruiting Latinos, and by June already had a presence in many key communities, injecting considerable daily spending. When Joe Biden began to mobilize this community in July -and despite spending triple to win their vote-, the Republicans had already created a first impression by defining the Democrat as a socialist, something that in the Hispanic universe resonates with the worst despots of Latin America.

Mobilize the Hispanic electorate

Three quarters of the Latino population is concentrated in just ten states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Texas. Between 2010 and 2018, Hispanic growth prevented population and labor force declines in New Jersey, New York, and Illinois. However, their electoral participation is still moderate. Only 10.6% of Latino voters participated in the 2020 elections and more than two million stayed home. This low turnout reflects the existence of a relatively large untapped segment of the population that, properly served, could lead to a significant expansion of either party's base.

Domínguez-Villegas points out that this abstention is structural and is due to both internal and external factors. On the one hand, it is a population with a young median age (30 years compared to 41 for non-Hispanic Americans, according to the 2020 Census), which is the segment generally less likely to vote in relation to the greater. The younger electorate tends to vote Democratic as opposed to the older generation who tend to be conservative.

Another voting group are the so-called recent citizenship immigrants. They are not familiar with the US voting system, the details of which vary from county to county. “Much of the population, like Asians, tend to come from the first generation of immigrants. Many states belonged to Mexico before, and although their citizens were here before the founding of the country, in terms of population compared to other minorities, many tend to be born outside the US," says Domínguez-Villegas, who also sees in the high abstention a motivation problem. Thousands of Latinos do not see themselves represented in the centers of power and there is a widespread feeling of political exclusion.

"Unfortunately, politics (in this country) has traditionally been made at the cost of the exclusion of the Latino community," explains the analyst. Being motivated to vote requires "seeing yourself as part of the local democratic fabric, feeling that you are heard and that your vote matters," he adds. For this reason, traditionally, one of the factors that has motivated Hispanics to vote en masse has been the perception of an existential threat. In 1994, California passed in a referendum the infamous Proposition 187 that denied undocumented Latinos emergency health and education services. Although the rule was taken to court the next day and never went into effect, fear did. The result was a great political mobilization that led this community to become citizens en masse.

Similarly, Arizona passed the 'Show Your Papers' law in 2010, which allowed any security agent to ask those who appear to be undocumented for proof of residency. "In both cases, Latinos organized, became citizens, and made themselves heard at the polls," says Domínguez-Villegas. «In 2018, in Arizona, they turned a strongly Republican state into a Democrat and in the Senate they positioned Kyrsten Sinema. In 2020 it was the Biden presidency and a second senate seat that Mark Kelly won."

'A day without mexicans'

Aware of their economic power, Latinos have mobilized on other occasions with local campaigns such as 'A day without Mexicans' to show their formidable contribution to the US economy. The pandemic has reinforced their indispensability, for which they have been recognized as part of essential workers. It is one of the groups with the most entrepreneurial initiative in the country and, according to a new study published in September, its contribution has allowed it to maintain sustained growth from 1.7 trillion dollars in 2015 to 2.8 trillion dollars in 2020.

According to the Latino Donor Collaborative/Wells Fargo report, if Latinos in the US were to constitute an independent country, their Gross Domestic Product would rank fifth in the world, surpassing that of the United Kingdom, India and France. In terms of personal consumption, they represent a market larger than the entire economy of countries like Canada or South Korea. A growing purchasing power, which in 2020 reached 1.84 billion, and which reflects the significant gains of Hispanics in personal income in terms of greater labor participation and educational advancement. The number of Latino-owned businesses has exploded in the last decade by 35%. One in four new businesses belongs to this community.

With just over a week to go before the crucial November elections, the fight for the Latino vote is more important than ever. Because in a representative voting system in which the winner takes all, in States like Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, a handful of Hispanic ballots could determine the future of Biden's Democratic presidency with control of the Senate and the House of Representatives. “We are in unprecedented territory,” Domínguez-Villegas acknowledges. And even more so with the new vote restriction laws and the reconfiguration of many electoral districts in favor of the Republicans. The results are unpredictable."