Democrats can’t afford to keep taking Latinos for granted
Esther J. Cepeda says despite their motivation Latino voters face more hurdles getting into the voting booth than people of any other race.
It’s that time of the year again, when Latinos suddenly transform, Cinderellalike, from an undereducated, downtrodden and problematic population into a desirable voting bloc. They will soon turn out in droves, like an awakened sleeping giant, to revive the fortunes of the Democratic Party. Or not. There’s little reason to believe that the upcoming midterms — or even the run-up to the 2020 presidential election — will inspire any breathless 2012-style magazine covers proclaiming that Latinos will pick the next commander in chief.
It’s not because Hispanics are uninterested in political participation, or because immigrants hold no political power. Oh, their clout could definitely be better, but the Pew Research Center recently calculated that at least 65 of the current 529 voting members of Congress (12 percent) are immigrants or the children of immigrants.
Mostly it’s because, as usual, Latinos are simply taken for granted.
“They’re all going to come out to vote against Donald Trump’s candidate,” goes the prevailing wisdom, because there’s no end to the evidence that life has gotten harder for Latinos during this presidency. So, as a result, it’s a no-brainer that eligible Latino voters will be energized.
Well, theoretically, that’s what should happen.
But there’s the pesky business of the Hispanics who voted for Trump in 2016 — even by the most thoroughly vetted estimates, this was anywhere from 11 percent (specifically in California, a blue state) to an astounding (and highly contested) 29 percent of Latino voters nationwide.
Then there’s the fact that the assumption that Latinos will overwhelmingly vote for Democrats tends to dull outreach efforts.
With the midterms less than two months away, nearly 60 percent of Latino registered voters report that they haven’t been contacted by a campaign, political party or organization asking them to register or vote, according to a recent tracking poll by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
“This poll confirms what we have known for some time — that Latino voters are still being ignored by the nation’s major campaigns, political parties and funders,” said Arturo Vargas, NALEO Educational Fund’s CEO, in a press release. “We are once again witnessing an overall lack of investment in Latino outreach efforts across the country in Election 2018, with the little funding that is available being diverted toward partisan outcomes. If we want to make significant progress increasing the number of Americans who vote, we cannot afford to have history keep repeating itself by continuously ignoring the nation’s second-largest population group election cycle after election cycle. The time for change is now.”
Lastly, there’s the irrefutable fact that no matter how angry, motivated or passionate Latino voters are, they’re still more likely to face hurdles to getting into the voting booth than people of any other race.
With the midterms less than two months away, nearly 60 percent of Latino registered voters report that they haven’t been contacted by a campaign, political party or organization asking them to register or vote, compared with 4 percent of white Americans and 7 percent of black Americans, according to a recent Public Religion Research Institute/Atlantic research brief.
Hispanics, like blacks, were three times more likely (9 percent) than white Americans to be told that they or someone in their household lacked the correct identification the last time they tried to vote.
Overall, 7 percent of Americans reported that the last time they tried to vote, they or a household member were told their name did not appear on the rolls even though they were registered. Meanwhile, 11 percent of Hispanics reported they or a household member had this experience.
And Hispanics were twice as likely as whites (16 percent vs. 8 percent) to say they couldn’t vote because of not getting the time off work to do so.
“Neither public polls nor private research suggests an organic surge to the polls among Hispanic voters outraged by Trump is developing the way it appears to be coalescing among college-educated white women and African-American women,” according to a CNN analysis. “And that means Democrats face their typical challenge of energizing a community whose voter participation has remained stubbornly low.”
Just look at the data: Latino turnout has been stubbornly low by others’ design.
If anyone — Democrats or Republicans — wants Latino votes, they need to put both genuine interest and money behind outreach and get-out-the-vote efforts. Only then will we be able to talk about how “energized” Latino voters can get.
Cepeda’s email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.