More Conservative Hispanics Supporting Trump For 2020

[A]merica might be in for a big surprise when they find out that Americans of Hispanic descent agree in the rule of law, small government, and the freedom to be individuals (not part of the collective). This is evident in many Hispanic neighborhoods across the country as Hispanic food trucks, restaurants, and mom-and-pop shops line commercial districts from Downtown L.A. to Steinway Avenue in Queens, NY. Entrepreneurship and hard work are mainstays of Hispanic culture(s).

In fact, even opposing voices agree. In their recent article: "Trump’s support among Hispanics and Latinos is real. Don’t assume it will fade"  the Washington Post's  David Byler points out:

"Hispanic and Latino Americans, like Asian Americans, don’t all come from one place. Most originally come from Mexico, but a solid number come from Puerto Rico, Cuba and elsewhere in Central and South America. And voting patterns vary across these groups. Cubans, for example, are a key voting group in Florida, and they tend to be more Republican than other Latino populations. There are real generational divides: Self-identified Hispanics who are third-generation or higher are more likely than others to self-describe primarily as American rather than Hispanic/Latino, less likely to say they have felt discriminated against because of their background and feel less connected to their country of origin. Hispanics live in a wide variety of areas, and there’s some evidence that rural Hispanics moved a bit toward Trump in 2016. Evangelical Protestant Hispanics are more Republican than mainline Protestant, Catholic or religiously unaffiliated Hispanics. There’s a gender gap in Hispanic voting, too. Democrats won both Hispanic men and women in 2018, but Hispanic men were more likely to vote for Republicans than women were.

It’s true that most Hispanic and Latino voters are Democrats, but some of the same political beliefs and identities that motivate non-Hispanics and non-Latinos to become Republicans, including religion, gender and partisanship also influence Latinos and Hispanics. Roughly 30 percent of them is a consistent Republican base.

Immigration alone doesn’t seem to be a silver bullet for winning Hispanic and Latino votes. Before Trump entered the national political scene, Pew found that only 34 percent of Hispanic registered voters said immigration was “extremely important” to them personally. And in 2017, 46 percent of Latinos rated “dealing with the issue of immigration” as a top priority for Trump and the new Congress. Education, the economy, health care, and other issues were more important to Latinos than immigration in both of these surveys. Even in times like these, when the parties are clearly divided by immigration, about 28 percent of Hispanic registered voters either lean toward the GOP or identify as Republicans. And as my former colleague Sean Trende showed in his great work on this subject, some Hispanics even hold hawkish views on immigration.

Republicans probably haven’t helped themselves with Latinos by taking a highly restrictionist position on immigration. Even more importantly, the perception that the party tolerates racist politicians, including Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), is a major obstacle to the party courting these voters. Many Hispanic and Latino voters do care about immigration, and Republicans could probably improve their approach by cooling down the rhetoric, trying to target their populist appeals in ways that explicitly help Hispanics and Latinos and thinking up an immigration policy that doesn’t involve pursuing a border wall at all costs. There’s a reason that Republicans often lose this group by 30 to 40 points"

This premise was reiterated on a recent episode of the This Is America podcast series, it was mentioned that "Latinos love liberty too." This alludes to the idea that Americans of Spanish-speaking heritage from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe don't vote monotonically. This is due to the nuances in nationality and geography.

h/t: Washington Post