Sunday, February 24, 2019

Hispanic Change?

This one is going to be a lot of guess work based on a handful of facts. Take it with a grain of salt, but remember it when I'm right... because I think I am.

Hispanics are shifting away from the Democratic Party.

Yep.

No, seriously. And I think I know why.

Here's the fact that started this. Last month, a liberal poll (the Marist poll for NPR) had a seemingly impossible result. Trump's support among Hispanics had risen 19% points to 50%. Let's start with the obvious, 31% support already is supposed to be impossible given that:
"Trump was, after all, still the same man who announced his candidacy by accusing Mexico of sending “rapists” across the border, the same man who ordered refugee children separated from their parents, the same man who has made building a wall to shut out migrants the focal point of his presidency."
That's the liberal view of Trump and it makes 31% seems impossible, right? (He got 28% in exit polls.) That's higher than most Republicans since GW Bush (40%). And to go to 50% seems ludicrous. Yet, here it was. Marist cautioned of a possible oversampling of Republicans and liberals dismissed this as insane, but soon more polls started showing similar number. Rooh rooh. Liberals are freaking out. How can an anti-Hispanic monster who wants to kill Hispanic kids possibly get Hispanic support? What is wrong with those stupid... uh. What is wrong with those people? Don't they know that if they support Trump, the world will fricken end?!!

Well, I have a theory... three actually, but one main one.

THEORY ONE: They Aren't Brown Blobs. Liberals see Hispanics as one people. They see them as the Indian/indigenous brown people the news trots out as victims. These are the people who work on liberals' lawns and clean their sheets. They are here illegally, and liberals are super condescending about them, but they see them as Democratic voters.

This is wrong, however. "Hispanics" are a label that fits a group as diverse as "Europeans." You have everyone from Mexicans to Brazilians with brown, white and black all mixed in. Argentinians are quite right wing, as are Cubans. Mexicans are left-leaning. Who the hell knows about Hondurans or El Salvadorans. They don't always agree within groups either. There was just a popular Mexican actor who got in trouble with liberals for looking down on an indigenous actress in rather racist terms. So they aren't monolithic in opinion to begin with.

What's more, depending on how long they've been in the country, their Hispanic identity fades and they become "white." There are millions of "Hispanics" you've met that you would never recognize as such. I think the polls are showing GOP support by Hispanics from right-leaning backgrounds and particularly among those who have slowly become honkys. These people aren't thought of by the Democrats when they talk about demographic destiny and that is the failure in their math... the one they failed to carry.

THEORY TWO: The American Dream. While other groups who have become slaves to the Democratic Party are happy to fight on social issues, Hispanics aren't. Blacks and women see themselves as ethnic/gender blocks and they want the culture to recognize them as such. Hispanics don't because they aren't monolithic, a Cuban doesn't see himself as a Mexican. Instead, what matters to most, as immigrants, is the American dream. Indeed, large numbers are here to work to get rich... the end. I suspect that some portion of the Trump-support growth comes from these people. They have realized that Trump is no danger to them, they like the economic effect of his policies (i.e. jobs), and they like that he's a "self-made" billionaire. They see that as confirming the path they want to take, and they don't particularly care for the attacks on his status as it reeks of ending upward mobility.

And now lets hit what I think is really going on...

THEORY THREE: We Don't Want You Here, Boy! With each passing day, the Democratic Party seems to become more strident. More importantly, though, they are strident about the issues their major constituencies care about. With gays falling away, that leaves white professional women and blacks. These groups really don't put any effort into the worries of other groups because they assume they will get their support automatically as the anti-White Male Party, nor do they offer anything other than their own pet peeves.

As an Hispanic, you can see the problem. Many of the things Hispanics want run contrary to the things white women and blacks want. White women and blacks want government money and jobs for themselves. They want laws discriminating in their favor. They want "reparations." Black groups want to unleash a crime wave. White women groups want to outlaw masculinity. Neither group cares about the economic path of Hispanics, the education that will help their kids, or their religious background. They don't want to add Hispanics to the table either because that diminishes the share of the booty they will get. Hence, Hispanics see the Democrats using them to obtain power and then giving them the shaft. Manual labor for life for you.

I think this is what is turning Hispanics away from the Democrats and toward a GOP that isn't particularly welcoming but does offer the things they want. The Democrats are offering poverty. They really did nothing to stop deportation either, and their views are as condescending as anything the GOP says. By comparison, the GOP whines about deportation (ineffectively) but at least offers a path to the American dream. Hispanics are rational. They see this.

So summing it all up, I think all the anti-white, anti-male speech by the Democrats is driving Hispanics away and they are now open to switching sides. Where it all ends isn't clear yet. But if the Democrats lose even a few percentages, they are doomed.

Thoughts?

14 comments:

tryanmax said...

A sub-point to both #1 and #3: Hispanic cultures tend to be more traditional regarding family, religion, and gender. Feminists can't hold themselves back from criticizing stereotypes of "machismo" when complaining about toxic masculinity. I thought stereotyping was a sin* for progressives. I get no sense that Hispanics are impressed by woke linguistics such as "Latinx" to describe Latinos in a gender-neutral. If anything, taking gender out of a Romance language is erasure, which is another sin* for liberals.


*unless it's being done to whitey

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I really think that the feminists and black angerists who make up the Democratic Party are turning these people off. The last few years in particular have seen such a nasty push by both that (1) these people must seem nuts or scary to Hispanics who don't share their views and (2) are so selfish that they almost by definition exclude any positives for Hispanics. Black power and Gurl power just don't translate into a better life for Hispanics. So why support them when GOP policies do lead to better lives for Hispanics?

I think they also lost faith when the Democrats did almost nothing to stop deportations, provide a path to citizenship, or normalize the country's relationship with Hispanics. That means that all the Democratic talk of opposing the evil GOP's anti-Hispanic blah blah is fake. At the same time, after all the nasty warnings about Trump, none of the threatened dangers have come true.

I get the sense that Hispanics are willing to be practical, because they're not obsessed like blacks and professional women. That means these things matter.

AndrewPrice said...

BTW, I agree with you about the language and machismo issue. Although, I think the Catholic issue has proven not to be true. Abortion and gays don't drive Hispanic voting.

tryanmax said...

No, I haven't gotten the sense that religious issues drive Hispanic votes any more than other demographics. Hispanic views on abortion is an area that should be of concern to Democrats, however. Whereas nearly 2/3 of whites and blacks say abortion should be legal in most cases, only half of Hispanics say the same.

AndrewPrice said...

I agree that it's another area they don't mesh with the Democrats. I was actually thinking back to the 1990s when a lot of conservatives were telling themselves that Hispanics would become conservatives over the abortion issue. But that never happened.

Now I think liberals are assuming that just being anti-white will pull in Hispanics, but that doesn't work either.

Jonathan H said...

I agree with you. A couple of supporting points I've read:
- I've seen studies that most people from Central and Southern America don't see themselves as "Latino" or "Hispanic"; they see themselves as Mexican, Honduran, Brazilian, etc. Quite a few of them don't like the labels since they feel it takes away from their nationality.
- Many legal immigrants from South of the Border worked hard and followed the law to get here; they don't want to see others rewarded for breaking the law - and they don't want the competition for jobs, and hence lower wages, that comes with illegals.
- I've heard, but don't have evidence to back it up, that in the second and third generation they identify more as American than as foreigners. This is similar to the speed at which Asians assimilate into US culture, to the point at which their is little to now second generation "Asian" culture once they don't live in the home of immigrants anymore.
- I believe the Democrats have taken them for granted just like with other victim or minority groups and in the long run, the majority of them don't want to be or stay victims - they want the American Dream. For example, many recent immigrants want to learn English and don't like being placed in schools that focus on their first language instead of helping them learn a second.

AndrewPrice said...

Jonathan, That's a good point too. The people who were most angry about that caravan were people who were trying to get into the country legally and didn't want them skipping the line.

Agreed about the English as a second language thing.

Thomas Anderson said...

I think Blogger ate my comment(s)--I was just gonna chip in to say, I wonder if what's going on in Venezuela could be an additional factor at the moment? Obviously it'll be of more significance to those with roots there, but it's an extremely dramatic and visible illustration of the dangers of leftism.

AndrewPrice said...

Hi Thomas. I don't see your comment in the spam folder. Sorry.

I think Venezuela and Brazil matter. There has been a shift to the right recently in South/Central America as leftist regimes have proven to be corrupt failures. So part of this might also be a shift to the right based on experience.

Anthony said...

A 20% shift in a few months time? That sounds like a polling error.

Republicans have been in the upper 20's with hispanics the past couple elections. Gains are likely given the state of the economy but massive leaps (by tens of points) are improbable barring a major catalyst.

Of course, there is a lot of time between today and election day and a really horrible leftist could do the trick for Hispanics and most everyone else but more likely than not 2020 will be a replay of 2012.

tryanmax said...

Anthony, I sort of agree about the polling error, but that doesn't say which end the error is on. Were they wrong then, or now? One can game this multiple ways. If it was caused by simple confirmation bias, I would think Hispanic support for Trump would've been under-reported initially and something gave pollsters a wake-up call.

If conspiracy is your game, was Hispanic support for Trump initially under-reported in hopes that it would discourage support? Or is it being over-reported now in hopes of generating complacency in the GOP?

Or, is it that Trump has successfully deported a large portion of his opposition?

Obviously, this is mostly fun, but in truth, I come up with more reasons for the numbers to be more accurate now than then.

AndrewPrice said...

Trump's Hispanic support was understated by about 10% by the polls in the last election. The left has called that polling error however, to claim it wasn't really 10% higher than polls predicted.

In terms of this being a polling mistake, that's what liberals were saying about the Marist poll until other started coming out with similar rises. Not all are at 50% (the lowest is at 36%) but they've all shown roughly similar rises.

AndrewPrice said...

As an aside, if there has been a 10% rise in the past few months, I think it's the start of the 2020 election. This coincides with all the angry female and black candidates coming together to tell us how they want to tax us into oblivion, impeach Trump, go socialist and grant themselves reparations.

I'm thinking that has made it obvious to Hispanics that they will get nothing from the Democrats.

At the same time, the wall is fizzling. The caravan is fizzling. No one is deporting the dreamers. Trump is supporting freedom in Venezuela. Brazil jumped to the right with their own Trump. Mexico jumped left and nothing improved. The Democrats have been defending MS13. Hispanic, black and female unemployment are at historic lows. Cuba continues to disappoint.

It strikes me that a collective jump away from the left of 10% of Hispanics is very possible.

There are also poll numbers that say that Hispanics make up the majority of "conservative" Democrats. It's easy to see them be sick of the rest of their team.

Anthony said...

By nature he is more inclined to kiss the ring of dictators than spit in their faces so Trump supporting freedom in Venezuela was a surprise and is an indication he is determined to get Hispanic votes beyond the base of 1/3 that Republicans have gotten the past couple elections.

Its not impossible but Hispanics are a weird fit with the white nationalists/conspiracy theorists that are a big part of Trump's base.

*Shrugs* As is always the case with elections, where people end up on polling day is the key question. Pollwise I'm sure there will be a lot of event driven yo-yoing between now and then. Much will hinge on who the Dem nominee is. I think Trump has cause to be optimistic.

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