The Rise of Latino Populism
Are changing voting behaviors a sign of America's fastest growing minority rejecting both the Democratic and Republican Parties?
Underneath the noisy clamor of a Presidential election defined by courtroom convictions, aging octogenarians, the injection of a new younger aspirant to the office who is black and female and widely disparate views of economic conditions lies a dramatic demographic transformation that is challenging our old assumptions about race, ethnicity and minority voting behavior. Minority voters, most notably Latinos - now America’s largest ethnic group - have been voting more and more Republican in nearly every election cycle since 2012. But this phenomenon, what has lackadaisically been described by pollsters grasping to understand these unprecedented results as a ‘racial realignment’ is proving to be neither.
Latino voters aren’t shifting rightward as much as they’re emerging as a unique voting bloc. This critical distinction is important to understanding where our concepts of race and minority voting behavior is headed as we close in on becoming a non-white majority country in the next decade. It is estimated that 38% of Latino voters cast their first ballot in 2016 or more recently and over 20% will be casting their first Presidential ballot this year. It is precisely these younger and newer voters that are among the most measurable ‘weakness’ in what Democrats have always relied on as their non-white base vote. In other words, politically speaking, young minorities are no longer behaving like young minorities have always behaved.
The term ‘realignment’ is often overused in politics. The word itself pre-supposes a change in voting behavior, but what we are witnessing is not a change in existing voting; rather, it is the emergence of new voters that don't fit the conventional view of how minorities vote, nor perceive themselves or the world. Moreover, this dynamic is occurring at precisely the moment we are witnessing one of history's greatest income inequality divides and young Latino voters are telling us that housing costs and general life affordability is making basic standards unattainable.
Meeting neither the stereotypical racial minority voter since the era of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960’s nor the assimilating ethnic voter of the last century, Latinos embody characteristics of both at a time when the country desperately needs a blended aspirational pluralistic approach to the trivialized ethnic and racial polarization that has defined our times. But the orthodoxies of both parties do not allow for this discussion at all. Until very recently, Democrats have doubled down on the quantifiably mistaken idea that immigration issues, causes on behalf of the undocumented and the plight of farmworkers are the prioritized issues for Latino voters. Republicans, for their part, have found more utility in the same immigration narrative but with the caveat that Latinos represent an invasion, an economic threat and the racial undoing of America. All the while Latino polling for decades has been telling politicians that jobs, the economy and affordability are primary issues for them but are summarily dismissed and replaced by border issues when talk of Latino issues arise. In fact, Latino public opinion on immigration is starting to look indistinguishable from all voters' opinions on the issue. This was crystalized earlier this year when a CBSNews/YouGov poll showed a one point difference between Hispanics and whites in support for President Biden's executive order on asylum seekers, posting a strong 69% support for the action compared to 70% for whites. Since then, numerous credible public opinion polls have showed a much more conservative position by Latinos on border security than conventional wisdom would suggest.
This over-emphasis by both parties on ethnic identity politics is manifesting as an anti-party populism among this emergent voting bloc. The two American politicians that have considerably outperformed conventional wisdom, polling and Election Day results among Latinos were Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump - the two most populist politicians of our time. To be sure the populism of Bernie's Sanders isn't quite that same strain as that postulated by Trump. The populism we can loosely characterize as coming from the Left tends to be anti-establishment as it relates to the tearing down of institutions on the Right - the traditional family, historical racial and gender constructs, the Church, and the military while also focusing its ire on the Democratic party itself for too closely aligning with those institutions. The populism advocated by Trump is animated by the tearing down of institutions, and leaders in its own party, it believes has been captured by the Left - The media, the government and academia among them. Nevertheless, both populist wings are defined mostly by the tearing down of institutions and that’s where they find common populist ground, especially when it comes to the dethroning of establishment players in their own political parties.
Latino voters are increasingly resonating with this populist sentiment across the political spectrum, and it appears to have a generational component. First generation Latino voters, those that immigrate and become citizens, have the highest generational propensity to vote - the most discernible activity demonstrating civic engagement. Polling by the Kaiser Foundation shows extraordinarily high levels of support and confidence amongst these recently migrated voters in America’s social institutions. But despite polling high levels of confidence and support for social institutions from government, media, and academia to the military, church and corporations, Latino institutional support does not appear to transfer to the country’s two major political parties as they grow further from the immigrant experience.
Latinos have among the weakest partisan anchors and the strongest proclivity to disaffiliate with both party’s and register as a voter with no party affiliation. The fastest growing group of unaffiliated voters in deep blue heavily-Latino California, for example, are Latinos. Unfortunately, Latino voters of the emergent second, third and now fourth generation, more than any other ethnic group, are also making the choice to not vote at all, a sign that neither party is selling what they want to buy - or worse the belief that the party system, as the populists would say ‘is rigged’. The children and grandchildren of immigrants tend to display decreasing partisan ties as both parties choose the extreme version of ethnic stereotypes within which to communicate their message. Ironically, the generation America had hoped would grow up not seeing color, is doing just that, but that color blindness in their politics is manifesting as anti-party populism in the ballot box.
This disenchantment is fertile ground for populism. Latino voters, especially the younger and newer ones, are looking for leaders who can speak to their unique blend of aspirations and frustrations, which polling strongly suggests is far more economic than racially motivated. Both Sanders and Trump have tapped into this vein by presenting themselves as outsiders fiercely, challenging the power structures of the status quo. It may just be that the blended nature of Latino’s as both European and indigenous ancestry might finally break our politics free of a black and white racial paradigm and help us focus more on the growing class and power divide that is superseding race as the primary motivator for the exploding number of young brown voters.