new York Johan is young, Latino – and will still vote for the Republicans in November. “Crime is so high right now, then the homeless problem and the immigrants,” he sums up. In his opinion, the democratic leadership is not doing a good job.
Like many other Latinos in the US, Johan, who works as a porter in one of Manhattan’s many apartment buildings, has an immigrant background: his parents moved to the US with him from the Dominican Republic when he was barely a teenager himself.
Again and again, Latinos like him are the target of Republican propaganda against immigrants. Former President Donald Trump even wanted to put up a wall to prevent people from Latin America from entering the country. How is it that a growing number of them are nevertheless voting for representatives of the Republican Party?
Traditionally, Latinos, i.e. people who come from Latin America themselves or whose ancestors come from the region, position themselves democratically. While around 40 percent of Latinos still preferred Democrats in 2018, according to a recent survey by the opinion research institute Post-Ipsos, this difference has narrowed to 27 percent. Now the Latino voters could tip the scales at the Midterms.
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The midterm elections on November 8 are considered a poll for the next presidential election and could reorganize Congress. A Republican majority in both chambers is realistic.
Five million more Latino voters
Currently, the Democrats in the House of Representatives are only slightly in the majority. There, all seats are newly elected, in the Senate it is a third. Currently, Republicans have 50 votes in the Senate, Democrats have 48, and Independents have two. Combined with the independents voting with the Democrats and the vice president’s vote, US President Joe Biden’s party has a razor-thin majority.
Midterms – US midterm elections – What is it about?
House of Representatives
In the midterm elections on November 8, the Americans will re-elect all 435 members of the House of Representatives. The term of office of members of parliament is generally limited to two years. So far, the Democrats have 222 seats there, the Republicans 213. Together with the Senate, the House of Representatives forms the Congress.
senate
In the Senate, Americans will only re-elect a third of the 100 seats in the midterms – a total of 35. Of the seats now up for election, 14 have been occupied by Democrats and 21 by Republicans. Currently, Republicans have 50 votes in the Senate, Democrats have 48, and Independents have two. Together with the independents and the vote of the vice president, the Democrats still have the majority.
governorships in the states
In 36 of the 50 states, the governorship will be re-elected on November 8th, i.e. the heads of state and government of the individual states. So far, 20 of the states with gubernatorial elections have been led by Republicans and 16 by Democrats.
Some of the most hotly contested states that could shift the balance of power in Washington include Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Latinos are the second-largest constituency in the United States — and the fastest-growing. Almost 35 million Latinos are eligible to vote, making up around 14 percent of all eligible voters. In the last midterm elections in 2018, there were around five million fewer Latinos who were allowed to vote.
And they are not in a good mood: Around 77 percent of them are dissatisfied with the current political situation in the USA, and just over half of them with the work of President Biden. The population group feels neglected by his party. About a third of them don’t think Democrats really care about Latinos.
Jesse Aman is a political advisor and alumni of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a nonpartisan organization representing Latinos in Congress. She sees various reasons why the Democrats are losing support with Latinos.
Many Republican issues appeal to the Hispanic community.
(Photo: AP)
For one thing, the term Latino encompasses many different cultures, religions, and family backgrounds. Each group has different priorities and concerns. “Latinos vote Republicans because they do raise issues that Democrats no longer care about,” Aman says. Many of the five million new voters come from the population group in the Republican-leaning Midwest, have grown up with the culture there and voted accordingly.
Johan from New York is also experiencing the change, especially among younger voters. “All my parents knew from their home country were the Democrats,” he says. “But the younger generation that lives here now experiences the system in the USA.” They would not automatically consider the Democrats to be the best choice, but would reconsider.
Latinos vote based on topic preference
According to a Pew Research Center poll, less than half of Latinos see a major difference between the two parties. They only vote based on topic preference and not based on an entire political alignment. The economy, health care, crime and education are particularly important for Latinos.
Latinos often work multiple jobs to survive. “There are a lot of Latinos who can barely afford the gas to drive to work,” says Aman. “And they still have to decide whether they’d rather have a roof over their heads or food on the table.”
>> Read here: “Standing on the edge of the abyss” – Every day new buses with migrants push New York to the limit
For Johan, too, the most important issues are those that affect him in his everyday life, such as the energy crisis: “Yes, the war has an impact on the high petrol prices,” he admits. “But when the Republicans were in power, we paid about $2.50 a gallon.” In New York, it is now about a third more than the US average.
Advisor Aman explains that the issue of immigration, on which Democrats are much more liberal than Republicans, is of little relevance to most Latinos. “People are automatically convinced that immigration is the number one priority for Latinos,” she says. This is one of the issues on which not all Latinos have the same point of view and partly support the hard line of the Republicans against immigration.
So it hardly seems contradictory that ex-President Trump received even more Latino votes in the failed 2020 election than before – despite or because of the building of the wall on the border with Mexico.
Between 2016 and 2020, the former president significantly increased his support among Latinos.
(Photo: Reuters)
Many Latinos are also bothered by the trend often associated with Democrats to use gender-neutral terms. This includes the artificial word “Latinx”. It stands for people from Latin American countries and is meant to replace Latino or Latina and also “Hispanic”. Hispanics include only people originating from Spanish-speaking countries.
More on the US elections:
In a poll by Democratic pollsters Bendixen & Amandi International, just 2 percent of Latin American respondents identify as “Latinx”, 71 percent prefer the word “Hispanic,” and 40 percent say “Latinx” bothers or even offends them feel.
The term is also misunderstood by Jose Castillo, a Republican from Florida. “Hispanic simply means Spanish-speaking and is therefore already gender-neutral. Why should we use Latinx now?” he asks.
Florida is one of the states where the Democrats are currently losing massive Latino votes, as observed by political scientist Susan MacManus of the University of South Florida. One of the reasons for this is that Republican Governor Ron DeSantis reopened the amusement parks where many Puerto Ricans work early in the pandemic.
Democrats, with resources, could try to persuade younger Latinos
(Photo: AP)
The fact that Latinos are migrating to the Republicans was already evident before this year’s election, as figures from the Pew Research Center show. While 66 percent of Latinos voted for the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, four years later it was only 59 percent for Biden. In contrast, the percentage of Latinos voting for Trump increased by 10 percentage points between 2016 and 2020, rising to 38 percent.
Political advisor Aman still sees hope for the Democratic Party. “The Democrats have to invest more money, resources and effort, and then they could also convince the young people,” she says.
One plus point could be the student loan forgiveness that Biden has launched. Minorities benefit particularly from this. “Many of whom this would affect are young. Maybe the results of the measure will show up in the elections in November after all.”
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