Last week my pals at the Jack Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research at Berkeley held a panel on “(Why) Are Democrats Losing the Latino Vote?” You may pick up the subtle aspect of the way the question is presented, as lots of progressives think there’s nothing to see in changing hispanic vote patterns—that the results in Florida, for example, are just those Castro-hating Cubans, who aren’t really Latino at all.
I wasn’t able to attend because the panel was scheduled at exactly the same time as my Thursday afternoon class, but the video is now up on YouTube (below). The panel was 1:20 long, but I recommend taking in the presentation by David Shor that begins around the 47:30 mark.
We’ve written before about David Shor here and elsewhere. He’s the progressive data analyst who lost his job with a Democratic data survey firm when he pointed out some uncongenial facts about the negative effects of Black Lives Matter riots, in particular, highlighting the work of Omar Wasow, another progressive scholar who is willing to question progressive dogma. Or take in “David Shor Is Telling Democrats What They Don’t Want to Hear” from the New York Times last fall.
In this presentation, Shor goes several levels deep in the survey data, and shows, among other things, that the drift of hispanic voters to Republicans was actually detectable in the 2018 midterm election (which was otherwise a blowout for Democrats), and that the larger shift seen in 2020 was not limited just to Texas and Florida, or just among certain subgroups such as Cubans. Among other findings, hispanic women trended more toward Republicans than hispanic men, which makes a hash of the popular explanation that Trump’s machismo explains his improvement with hispanic voters.
What explains this shift? Shor observes that hispanics are culturally conservative, and that the Democratic Party has shifted so far to the left that hispanics are starting to abandon their historical voting allegiance to Democrats. “Most hispanic voters do not identify as liberal,” Shor notes. (And by “liberal” he really means “left.”)
This is not the narrative the left wants to hear, and kudos to Shor for his objectivity and candor. (Again, scroll to the 47:30 mark to take in Shor’s excellent presentation.)
Chaser—I think this schematic explains it well:
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