Will 60-40 be the new split among Latinos?

If so, that's bad news for Democrats, and it won't be reversed by lamenting the focus on media narratives

Since nobody took the bait last Friday, I’ll answer my own questions. Don’t worry, I’m used to having my own internal monologue about Latinos. What’s the right amount of oxygen for media (and all of us) to give the Latino shift toward Republicans, and what could happen if we ignore it? I raised these questions after watching Julian Castro on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show, complaining about media narratives about the Latino shift towards Republicans, which, he feared, could become a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

I’ll answer quickly by saying I think it deserves attention because it’s significant, real, and won’t go away just because we’re not talking about it.

First, let’s look at how the story Democrats have told about the 2020 election has evolved over the past two years.

Phase 1: Focus on the good news instead of the bad. Everyone was paying attention to the dramatic Latino shift in Florida and Texas, leading Democrats said, but what we should really pay attention to is how Latinos helped Joe Biden win in Arizona and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and, therefore, helped him win the presidency. Here’s the historian and journalist Juan González making this case on Democracy Now, right after the election.

Phase 2: Isolate Florida and Texas. This was really Phase 1b, since it happened in tandem with Phase 1. See this story in The Washington Post, published the day after the election, titled “Democrats lose ground with voters in Florida and Texas, underscoring outreach missteps.” (Sub-plot: it’s always about the failures of Democratic outreach, rather than the Republican policies, even on a limited number of issues, that could actually appeal to Latinos; it’s always easier to throw more money at a problem than to ask yourself whether you’re selling the right goods.)

Phase 3: Note that Trump’s margin fell within historical norms, and nobody should be surprised. See this story from WBEZ Chicago, which notes that it was to be expected that some 30 percent of Latinos would support Republican presidential candidates, as they’ve done for a long time. And see this story a month later in The Conversation, with the headline “Fact Check US: Has Donald Trump really made a breakthrough in the Latino electorate?” It made the same point: “Trump made no real inroads with Latino voters since 2016. In both 2016 and 2020, two thirds of this group voted Democrat – 63% for Hilary Clinton, then 65% for Joe Biden.” Except this wasn’t quite right.

Phase 4: Acknowledge that there was a “baseline shift” and that Trump’s margin was wider than reported in exit polls. In December 2020, Weiyi Cai and Ford Fessenden of The New York Times published their fascinating data visualization of how immigrant neighborhoods all across the United States, with large Latino and Asian American populations, shifted toward Trump. It wasn’t just in Miami, but in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, etc. Then, in late spring 2021, after looking at more granular data, the Pew Research Center reported that Trump won 38 percent of the Latino vote, not the 32 percent reported in exit polls. That put him more in George W. Bush in 2000 territory than Trump in 2016 territory.

More recently, we’ve learned from a slew of polls and reporting on them that Republicans seem to be holding on to the gains they made with Latinos in 2020. Here’s one example, based on a NYT/Siena poll that oversampled Latinos. Here’s another, from Equis Research, which opened with, “The Latino vote remains stuck in the 2020 moment.” This is where Julian Castro’s appearance on The ReidOut comes in.

Phase 5: Express frustration with reporting focusing on Republican gains and note that Democrats are still winning the Latino vote. Although I haven’t counted the number of articles, it’s probably true that Republican gains have gotten more attention than the fact that Democrats are still winning a majority of Latino votes. That focus is justifiable, in my opinion, because it’s the more newsworthy of the two stories; the one describing a new and, depending on your perspective, worrying phenomenon; the one we should be trying to figure out how to respond to.

Nobody has claimed that Republicans won, are winning, or will win “the Latino vote.” But the Democratic theory about their multi-racial coalition never hinged on winning a simple majority of Latino (and other non-white) voters; it rested on racking up 30-or-so point margins.

If a 60-40 split does in fact prove to be a new normal—for the time being, at least—that’s not good news for Democrats. I say for the time being because history is change over time, so, if it pans out, there is no reason to believe that a 60-40 split would be permanently fixed.

That’s also why hearing Julian Castro worry that the “narrative” of Republican success among Latinos could become a “self-fulfilling prophecy” feels a little bit like watching an ostrich with its head in the sand. I do know what he means. Once ideas are out in the world, they can gain momentum and take on a life of their own. But instead of sounding like a coach crying foul when something doesn’t go your way—I won’t name names, because I don’t want to lose any Duke fans—teach your team how to fight back and execute your much better game plan.

Democrats: craft your own narrative that takes on a life of its own and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just as you don’t win games by crying foul, you don’t win elections by complaining about Republicans and journalists. You win elections by convincing voters that your policies will improve their lives. That probably sounds idealistic in our world today—many have argued that it’s quaint to assume that this is politics as usual—but it’s what I believe about how politics should work, and at the same time that we try to fight back scary political realities, we also have to work towards a vision for how we want politics to look.

We know that Republicans will do what Republicans will do, because they have their own game plan. We may justifiably feel that Republicans have stretched truth so far it has snapped, but they’re also telling Latino voters that they’ll create jobs, lower inflation, keep streets safe, defend religious liberty, and help kids get a quality education in private schools, public charters, and traditional public schools. It doesn’t really matter if it’s true if Latino voters believe them, does it?

To be fair, Democrats in some places seem to have absorbed the lesson that they need to meet voters wherever they are, by listening to their concerns and then trying to convince them that they will address them. That’s one thing I liked about Nicholas Lemann’s recent article in The New Yorker, “The Democrats’ Midterm Challenge,” which focuses on races in New Hampshire and Nevada, where Democratic candidates are focusing only on “kitchen table” issues and even downplaying their positions on President Biden’s policies, if they aren’t popular among particular voters.

(I actually think Democrats across the land should be highlighting some of Biden’s achievements, including student loan forgiveness, a gun safety bill, and implementing some of the economic policies championed by Trump himself that bucked the reigning trend in both parties toward globalization and neoliberalism).

But you wouldn’t know that Democrats might already be moving in the right direction from hearing Julian Castro lament a narrative that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When Joy Reid asked him about that narrative, instead of saying that he has been “pulling my hair out for the last couple months,” he might have said, I’m less worried about whatever narrative Republicans and journalists are telling, than about convincing Latinos everywhere that we’ve got their backs and are fighting and will fight for them. Then back up those words with action. That could lead to a different narrative. That would become the media focus. That could become its own self-fulfilling prophecy.