NEW POLL: Post election Latino Voter poll

New polling sheds light on the economic impact of Latino voter decisions in November's elections.

Photo by Glenov Brankovic on Unsplash

Now that much of the election hand-wringing is done and the finger pointing amongst Democrats is moving from each other to the Republicans, it’s more than appropriate to point out that the consensus (and verifiable data) is concluding that there was a strong economic component to the Latino shift we witnessed.

For some of us that was obvious and predictable. For others the need to blame Latino voters as too uninformed and ignorant to know what’s best for them continues unabated. There is nothing, it would seem, as infinite as the capacity for self denial.

In the smoldering ashes of the numerous post-election post-mortems I was asked to participate in I decided that I would do something different. Despite being invited to dozens of such events in large part to the success of my book “The Latino Century” in predicting precisely the causes of such a likely shift, I wanted to confirm to my audiences just what it was that driving Latino voters sentiment. So I did what made the most sense: I conducted a poll.

Not just any poll. It’s rare to poll after an election and it’s even rarer to conduct a survey of Latinos after an election. I also wanted there to be no uncertainty about the methodology or findings so I partnered with Binder Research to conduct the survey in a bi-partisan fashion.

David Binder, for those unaware, was the pollster brought in late in the Biden campaign as things were looking bleak. His firm continued in that role through Harris’ campaign and their reputation for good research, polling, methodology and results is second to none. This poll was for California Latinos only because the rightward shift has now hit California’s shores and the changing Democratic coalition that will result will be felt most pronounced in the Golden state. Not surprisingly, these results reflect what national Latino surveys had been finding as a run up to the election, just not with the economic specificity we examined. I will be polling other Latino heavy states after the first of the year and will cover findings here also.

For the record we conducted 25% of our interview in Spanish, about 5% more than I’d prefer because it skews the findings more recently migrated and Democratic, but I’m glad I did because it made the results all the more eye-popping.

The findings were illustrative of what was driving Latino voter sentiment through the election cycle and coupled with actual results provide keen insight into what is emerging among this fast growing group of voters.

The economy was, of course, the top issue but in a way I haven’t seen in decades of studying Latino voters. More often than not it is ‘jobs’ and ‘job opportunities’ that were drivers among Latino voters.

Not so this year.

‘Affordability’ and the cost of living were by far and away the most intense priority for Latinos. The condescending attacks from the on-line Left about voters who made decisions in the Presidential race on “the price of eggs” illustrates just how out of touch Democratic influencers are with working class voters.

They should continue to judge at their own peril.

Working class people are struggling. They have been for some time and the results of this survey in deep blue California should serve as a rude and sobering awakening for those who think economic stresses can be sloughed off in the face of a withering democracy.

Fully 90% of Latinos said “The price of everything” was a top concern, outpacing every other concern. These are astonishing numbers. Like video game level numbers.

When we asked respondents to list their greatest concerns about ‘affordability’ notice the prioritization of housing. It’s central to everything in today’s economy. I tried to raise alarm bells about this during the campaign. Harris made great adjustments to get there but the damage of years of not addressing the problem had set in stone.

More importantly, when the cost of your rent or mortgage exceed 50% of your income, you certainly know the price of a dozen eggs. You know the price of gas. You know the price of damn well everything.

Curiously, while housing, groceries and gas top the list - notice at the very bottom is taxes. I’ll get back to that in a minute.

Also notice that ‘jobs’ are the least of Latino economic concerns. This is what Biden and Harris were trying to remind people of. They’d created one of the best job machines in history. Everyone has a job.

But very few people had a job that made life affordable and that’s what Democrats missed.

Many people had two or three jobs. Just to make ends meet. That’s not a healthy economy, that’s a hellish treadmill of working more and more and falling further and further behind.

Eliminating junk fees doesn’t address this. Eliminating snack taxes doesn’t make life better. Hell even raising the minimum wage becomes meaningless (Californians rejected minimum wage increases in November).

Affordability is a deep seated economic problem that can’t be solved with gimmickry. Housing affordability can’t be solved overnight or even in a few years.

Democrats telling Latino voters the understood them actually made things worse because Latinos believe Democrats understand them more than Republicans, they’ve just given up believing Democrats will actually do anything to improve their lives.

But…and here’s where it gets interesting. There’s very little evidence suggesting Latinos have become more conservative. The poll showed basically no movement towards the GOP in terms of believability or future voting behavior.

This is both good news and bad news for both parties. For Democrats, it means Latinos aren’t moving towards Republicans as much as the narrative might suggest. There’s no question it’s real and has been happening for a long time but this poll, like most surveys, shows that Latinos are leaving the Democratic Party in big numbers and many are choosing to not vote at all. Others are re-registering Independent and, of course, many have cast their lot with Republicans. This poll shows that Latinos are leaving the Democratic Party much more than they are moving towards the Republicans.

That’s a big difference. And it’s both good and bad news. It’s good because Latinos aren’t moving towards Republicans for ideological reasons suggesting they can be brought back. It’s bad because Latinos are essentially saying they neither trust nor believe that Democrats are going to do anything that will meaningfully improve their lives and in a lot ways, that can be worse. Rebuilding that trust through results takes a long long time.

For Republicans, the belief that somehow they’ve been validated as not being racist and being the party of the new working class is premature. Yes, all of the pieces are there to suggest a possible permanent shift is underway (I wrote a whole book on it remember?) but that presumes Republicans won’t overplay their hand on issues like immigration, border security or a whole host of other racially and ethnically sensitive issues. If it’s one thing I learned after thirty years of working in GOP politics it’s that Republicans will always overplay their hand on racial issues.

Always.