According to a new poll by the Wall Street Journal, Latino voters are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans heading into next year’s election. Asked which party they would back in the midterms if the election were today, 37 percent said they would support the Republican congressional candidate and 37 percent said they would favor the Democrat. 22 percent said they were undecided.
Last year, Latinos gave Democratic House candidates more than 60 percent of their vote, according to polls at the time. Even if those who are currently undecided were to vote overwhelming for Democrats next year, the Dem vote would still fall short of 60 percent.
Remember, too, that the GOP fell just short of gaining control of the House last year, even with more than 60 percent of Latinos apparently voting Democrat.
What about a hypothetical 2024 rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump? According to the same survey, Latino voters split evenly on that, too. 44 percent said they would back Biden. 43 percent said they would vote for Trump.
In 2020, an AP VoteCast survey found that Biden won 63 percent of the Latino vote. The real number might have been somewhat smaller, but clearly Biden has slipped badly with Latinos.
It looks like Latinos don’t like violent crime, inflation, and mass illegal immigration appreciably more than the rest of American voters.
All of the usual caveats associated with one poll apply, especially since the 2022 election is eleven months away and there are so many undecided voters. But if this poll accurately reflects sentiment among Latinos, even eleven months out, it’s very big news.
UPDATE: A new YouGov/Economist poll finds that Biden’s approval rating among Latinos is only 40 percent, with 47 percent disapproving. In the Wall Street Journal poll, the split was 42-54.
So the news from the YouGov poll isn’t as good (from my perspective) as that from the WSJ poll. But it’s pretty good.
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