When you look at demographic history and projections for the US, it becomes clear very quickly that Hispanic voters are poised for enormous power.
And they have a definite, strong, Democratic lean:
(The “same Gallup analysis” is a 2010 survey.)
So, Hispanic voters are important as a bloc, and they are currently trending toward growth and toward the Democratic party.
For the GOP to stay competitive, they need to do something about one or both of these trends. They either need to curb the growth of the Hispanic population, or they need to convert the growing population into a more equitable split between the parties.
They seem to be going all-in with the former rather than the latter by pushing bills like the recent Arizona law that, at least in the eyes of Hispanics, creates a more hostile environment for Hispanics in the US.
My position: You can’t win Hispanic votes through anti-immigration (even if the word “illegal” is stuck in there) legislation. And you can’t realistically halt the growth of the Hispanic population through legislation. The GOP has adopted, at least for now, a losing strategy. This isn’t just losing the Southwest for a generation but is complete electoral doom.
Hispanics are never going to go for the Republican party. Courting them makes no sense for the Pubs, and pandering to the Hispanic vote will only cause resentment middle and working class whites who increasingly feel alienated from the government and the upper classes without giving them any real gains. Hispanics alos expect the Dems to dole out a lot of goodies to them, courtesy of the taxpayers. The Pubs would be doing extremely well to consistently get as much as a third of the Hispanic vote.
An increase in political power for Hispanics necessarily means a decrease in political power for middle and working class whites. Expect greater racial tension, and more political instability.
This is completely false. Frankly, a large proportion of Hispanics are foursquare with the Republican Party on a lot of the platform. They’re majority Catholic, with the Catholic pro-life beliefs and the Catholic anti-gay-rights beliefs. They tend to be conservative in most areas. And they were voting with and for Republicans before the immigration debate got hot.
It’s only since the Republicans started going all-out anti-immigrant and touting repressive measures which more or less necessitate racial profiling on Hispanics that the Republicans lost them. They’re not the most comfortable fit with the Democratic Party, with the pro-life and anti-gay and general conservatism, but at least the Dems aren’t passing “show your papers” laws.
As Hispanics enter higher income brackets, their voting patterns will become Republican. Of course, so long as immigration flow stays strong, the gini coefficient (income gap) of the US will remain high, giving extra favor to the Democrats. If you shut down immigration and let the natural income disparity return, that will help Republicans.
Can you give me an example of any actual law, bill, or official action taken in America, in reality, that specifically gave Hispanics power at the expense of middle and working class whites? Seems to me that conservatives and racists often spin these kind of fears in order to prevent actions that benefit poorer people in contrast to wealthy people. I just can’t think of anything that specifically would benefit Hispanic people in contrast to middle and working class white people.
I don’t know how true this is of the younger generation, but in my own family I’d say that 90% or better are dyed in the wool Democrats. The only notable exception to this that I can think of off the top of my head is my dad (even my mom is a Dem).
Actually, it depends. A lot of 2nd or 3rd generation Hispanics look at the issue much differently than 1st generation types like myself. It’s not as cut and dried as you might think, especially in the South West.
That said, I don’t think that it’s likely to shift a lot of Hispanics to vote for Republicans, since it’s more tradition and demographics (IMHO) that causes Hispanics to vote Republican. On a lot of the quasi-religious issues (gay marriage for instance, or abortion) I think that a lot of Hispanics are more in line with that type of Republican plank than Democrat…yet Hispanics still seem to overwhelmingly vote Dem.
I think this is a mis-characterization. I don’t think Republicans are trying to halt the growth of Hispanics as to halt the influx of immigrants. That’s two different things. The NATIVE (now) Hispanic population isn’t going to shrink due to cutting off immigration, after all.
Someone somewhere must’ve actually crunched the numbers on this. Do Hispanics now vote for the GOP at a rate equal to whites if the numbers are corrected for income disparity? Googling reveals a bunch of anti-immigration sites that make this claim, but they don’t really back it up with any data or links to reputable studies.
No idea, but it’s almost certainly been historically true or else we wouldn’t have ended up with the income<->party relationship that we have. Minus any reason to think it would go differently with Hispanics, I’d presume it would stay the same.
But the OP posits a reason why it would go differently. Hispanics of any income level will be turned off by both anti-immigrant legislation and (probably more so) by the various xenophobic sounding rhetoric that goes along with it.
Not sure if that’s what will really happen, but it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out if its happening now in any case.
Right. There are very few Hispanic conservatives out there. The OP might as well have suggested something as ridiculous as a Hispanic, conservative, lawyer. Bah, never happen.
Strong immigration reform, limiting influx and numbers, adherence to processes, and umbrage at queue-jumpers is a legitimate and rational viewpoint, one that is independent of background (Hispanic or otherwise). However, the current clime of fostering emotional Hispanic-directed fear and anger will entrench the perception of the party as generally anti-Hispanic/minority.
Note, not every advocate for immigration reform is tapping into the populist, emotional trough, but enough are to taint the party. I don’t think it’s strong enough to debilitate the party, but I do think the tradeoff of short-term electoral gains made by the emotional attacks will lose them larger numbers/percentages of voters in the long run.
This is the part that I came in to comment on. I know several 2nd and 3rd generation Hispanics that would probably side with the GOP if the immigration reforms proposed by that party wouldn’t generally make their life harder as well. They make derisive comments about the home decor chosen by recent immigrants, and make statements about them that could be best paraphrased as “They’re ruining it for all of us.” I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with their reasoning, but they obviously aren’t pro illegal immigration. They could probably be wooed by non-crazy reform, but I have not seen the GOP offering much except a bunch of rabid populism. This is one of the things that GWB actually had some kind of handle on, it seemed. His party did not agree.
The only minority (excluding Italians, Irish, etc. who were minorities back in the day) who I think has reached the same level of income distribution is probably Asians.
During the last election: “41 percent of likely Asian American voters indicate favor for Sen. Barack Obama, compared to 24 percent who supported his opponent, Sen. John McCain.”
Party affiliation in the US is about 43% for Democratic and 33% for Republican (with generally lower turnout at the voting booth among Democrats), however, the last election went strongly in Obama’s favor with even some Republicans swinging that way. Overall, I’d say that Asian Americans look to line up decently.
Hispanics are probably more likely to go to rural areas than people from say Pakistan or China. This will also make them more likely to turn Republican. Hispanics are also very religious, which again tends to favor Republicanism.
I was going to mention Asians. The notion of assimilation and wealth leading to conservatism sure hasn’t played out for them and you’ll recall the disproportionate numbers of inappropriate donors/influence brokers Clinton got mired down with who were Asian. (N.B. older Vietnamese and many Filipinos are an exception to the generally Dem-trending affluent Asians).
I’ve been hearing the Hispanics-are-natural-conservatives thing for a long while, and never bought it (in a forum that feels the way this one generally does about GWB, I will mention in a crass guilt-by-association way that this was one of the many moronic Bush/Rove tropes, that amnesty would win the GOP mass votes from Hispanics – which didn’t happen after the idiot’s father granted amnesty 20 years ago, but oh well). Hispanics are conservative and religious and blah blah blah – but this doesn’t seem to deter many of their immigrants from the same social pathologies of other segments of the underclass.
A final point as to the successive-generations-will-be-more-conservative idea – the one group of Hispanics that was historically conservative (and voted as such) in the U.S. – the anti-Castro Cubans – was an anomaly, and their kids and grandkids are increasingly much more receptive to liberal/Democratic voting patterns.
If by “never” you mean “in the next few years” you’re probably right. But beyond that, especially as far out as 2050, you have no idea. Politics in 40 years will likely be totally different from today.
Identity politics cuts both ways, the more hispanic the Democrat party becomes the more white the GOP will become. Since this country is 75% white if the GOP can get 10% more of the white vote, that is as many voters as getting half of the hispanic vote. Also hispanics tend to be poorer than whites and poorer people don’t vote as much.
