What's at stake for Latinos who say that we "saved democracy" in 2022?
On December 4, the awesome cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz tweeted a new drawing. It showed a stone slab with the words “U.S. Democracy” being propped up on the left by a Greek column, and on the right by a Latina wearing a skirt that said, “Latino Vote.” Alcaraz included a description of his drawing: “Latinos saving democracy.”
Alcaraz was hardly the only Latino to claim that Latinos had saved democracy. Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona wrote that Latinos “delivered Senate wins in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada and ushered in 42 Democratic members of Congress, the most in history.” Maria Teresa Kumar of Voto Latino, meanwhile, said it was the “honest truth” that “Latino voters won Arizona and Nevada.”
First, let’s take a quick look at Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, the places that Latinos “won” for Democrats. In the gubernatorial races, Latinos favored the Democratic candidate by 4 percentage points in Arizona (51 to 47), by 25 percentage points in Nevada (62 to 37), and by 47 percentage points in Pennsylvania (72 to 25). In Senate races, Latinos favored Democratic candidates by 18 percentage points in Arizona (58 to 40), by 29 percentage points in Nevada (62 to 33), and by 36 percentage points in Pennsylvania (67 to 31). You can see this data in charts here. Compared with the 2020 presidential race, the Democratic candidates for Governor and Senator in Arizona won a lower percentage of the Latino vote than Biden did; in Nevada, they won 1 percentage point more of the Latino vote than Biden; in Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate for Governor won 3 percentage points more than Biden, while the Democratic candidate for Senator won two percentage points less.
I hear Chuck Rocha’s voice in my head, reminding me that I can’t necessarily compare midterm elections with presidential elections because of how different turnout is. But even without his reminder, what these numbers tell me is that Democrats did really well—if not spectacularly better than in 2020—among Latinos in these crucial battleground states, especially considering the historical trend that in midterm elections voters usually vote against the party in power. Rocha and other Latino Democratic campaign strategists deserve a lot of credit for these victories, with their insistent message that Democrats needed to invest in Latino communities in these places by putting up Spanish-language ads, among other things.
But how would we go about proving that Latinos made the difference in these states? I’ve been thinking about this question in part because of the back and forth I’ve had with a reader of this newsletter, Danny Sepulveda, who defines difference makers as the group of voters without whom a candidate could not have won. (Thank you for engaging, Danny, and forcing me to clarify my thinking). By this definition, Latinos clearly made the difference in Arizona and Nevada, since Democratic candidates could not have won without support from Latino voters. In Arizona, Governor-elect Katie Hobbs (D) defeated Kari Lake (R) by a mere 17,000 votes. In Nevada, Governor-elect Joe Lombardo (R) defeated Steve Sisolak by some 14,000 votes. The Democratic margin in the Senate race in Arizona was much larger, while the Democratic margin in Nevada’s Senate race was even narrower.
But it seems to me that other groups in Arizona and Nevada could claim to have made the difference as well. Nate Cohn of The New York Times recently implied that the Democratic candidates for Senator in Arizona and Nevada wouldn’t have won without support from Republicans who crossed party lines; Republican turnout was significantly higher than Democratic turnout, yet the Democratic candidates won. Before proclaiming that Latinos were the difference makers in these places—and beyond the precise number of Republicans who crossed party lines in Arizona and Nevada—I’d want to know how women voted compared with men, and how younger voters voted compared with older voters. (And to be sure, there could be a lot of overlap between these groups—Latino Republicans could have crossed party lines, Latinas are part of the wave of women that opposed the Dobbs decision, and etc).
In Pennsylvania, by contrast, Governor-elect Josh Shapiro (D) defeated Douglas Mastriano (R) by an impressive 800,000 votes, and Senator-elect John Fetterman (D) defeated Mehmet Oz (R) by a healthy 260,000 vote margin. Never mind the fact that Latino turnout dropped sharply in Pennsylvania compared with 2020 (Even though this data point could mean little in light of Rocha’s warning about comparing presidential and midterm elections, the drop-off was an alarming 50 percent in precincts that are 75 percent Latino or more, and 48 percent in precincts where the population is between 50 and 75 percent Latino. Moreover, more than half of Latino voters in Pennsylvania say they didn’t hear from any political candidate or party, showing an alarming lack of engagement). The real point is that in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial and Senate races, Latinos couldn’t have been the deciders because Shapiro and Fetterman would have won without a single Latino vote.
Moreover, in addition to these states where assertions that Latinos made the difference are at least debatable despite claims that they were difference makers, there are other examples of Latinos helping election deniers win their races: Monica de la Cruz in Texas, Mike Garcia in California, and Maria Elvira Salazar and Ron DeSantis in Florida, for example. Are the Latino votes in these places to be understood as votes against democracy. At the very least, we should keep in mind the meaning of how Latinos voted in these races when we consider the idea that Latinos saved democracy.
Since it doesn’t seem to me to be a plain fact that Latinos saved democracy, I assume that there’s something powerful at stake for Latino Democrats who insist that they did. Here are a couple guesses about what that thing might be.
1) Latino Democrats have (rightfully) been frustrated with all the media attention over the past couple of years to the anticipated “realignment” of Latinos, so when that realignment didn’t materialize, they declared victory. Realignments and waves don’t happen overnight, and they may not happen at all if parties are able to correct course, so it was always silly to expect this to happen in 2022.
2) It is a constant battle to keep candidates, policy makers, and party leaders focused on Latinos, so it is therefore important to argue that Latinos are critical and decisive in order to ensure that both Latinos and those who seek their votes remain engaged.
3) In the months immediately following elections, it is important for partisans to set the narrative that will shape how Americans and party leaders view particular groups in the run up to the next election.
But these considerations are about narrative-making and strategy rather than reflections of objective, empirical, data-driven truth. As such, they raise questions as much as they provide answers. Do arguments about Latino political power, and the importance of Latino voters, depend on assertions that Latinos are the difference makers, rather than really important players in the Democratic coalition? And what about all of the Latino Democrats who’ve argued for Latino solidarity with Black, Indigenous, or Asian American communities? Does the insistence that Latinos won or decided elections—that Latinos were the difference makers—help or harm that project?
My basic premise is this: politics in the United States, and communities in the United States, are complex and messy, whereas the job of partisans is to simplify and clarify this messiness by arguing that Latinos are one way or another, or that they did one thing or another, or that they behaved one way or another. All of the partisan narrative-making about Latinos, moreover, takes place in a context where non-Latino Americans still don’t know that much—and may not even care that much—about us, and so they take the partisan narratives at face value rather than digging beneath them to see a more complicated reality. But if the goal is truly understanding who Latinos are, as voters and more, we should focus more on messiness than clarity. To me, this more than anything else is what the 2022 midterms showed, and I hope that curiosity about this messiness will define our approach to understanding Latinos in 2024 and beyond.
I seek Democratic victories as much as any other Democrat, but I don’t think those victories will come just because we insist that Latinos are the most important voters of all. After months of dissection, I think it will become even more clear that Democrats did better than expected in 2022 because American voters rejected the Dobbs decision and Republican extremism more broadly. Latinos are certainly part of this story, but in order for Latino voters to feel we’ve gotten the recognition we deserve, do we have to see ourselves as its main protagonists?
Thanks for the shout out Geraldo. The phrase "saved democracy" is somewhat dramatic and maybe not particularly useful. But the idea that data show that Latinos are a core Democratic constituency, one that we can win through investment and engagement, and critical to the future of our party's success (and imho the success of the country) is important for the party to acknowledge and I think the data proves it in this cycle (not everywhere but in very important places). If acknowledged, then not only in the mechanics of campaigning, but in the substance of policymaking, the community will receive greater attention and investment.
I am particularly interested in understanding the overlap between our appeal or lack thereof with working class men and how that overlaps with challenges we face in the Latino community. Infrastructure investments and tax and spending policies focused on the middle class should help. From a policy perspective, immigration remains the most perilous issue for policymakers and the community as a whole. Latinos are a disproportionate focus of the public discussion on that issue and changing the narrative to fixing immigration for the benefit of all of us needs to catch on before we can move solutions. But most Latinos are here legally and just struggling to make a better life for themselves and their kids. We need to speak to those needs and propose solutions. And so do our friends across the aisle.