Changing Identity Pollitics

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it covers voter demographics.

Mike Madrid:

Pew Research is the gold standard of Latino public opinion research in this country. When Pew releases a new National Survey of Latinos, people in my line of work stop what they’re doing and read it. Their new report, “U.S. Hispanics Are Divided on Whether Their Identity Helps or Hurts Them in America,” is one of those studies. It confirms something I have argued for years, most fully in my book The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy. Latinos are changing identity politics in this country. But they are not changing it in the direction either party wants to believe.

The topline numbers in the Pew study tell the story. Sixty-one percent of Hispanic adults say being Hispanic is an extremely or very important part of how they think about themselves. That is a real number. Identity still matters to most Latinos. But ask whether that identity helps or hurts their chances of getting ahead in America, and the answer splits three ways: 26 percent say it helps, 33 percent say it hurts, 40 percent say it makes no difference at all. There is no consensus here. There is no single Latino experience for either party to build a coalition around, whether that coalition is built on grievance or on advantage.

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Generation tells the same story from a different angle. Seventy-one percent of Hispanic immigrants say their identity is extremely or very important to them. That falls to 57 percent among the second generation and 51 percent among the third generation or higher. Ask if they consider themselves “a typical American,” and the numbers move in the opposite direction: 27 percent of immigrants say yes, 60 percent of the second generation, 72 percent of the third generation and beyond. Distance from the immigrant experience is doing more to shape Latino identity than party registration is.

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Equis surveyed 2,000 registered Latino voters in May 2026 and asked them, without prompting, what they consider the most important issue facing the country. The answer is not immigration. It is not close. Economy and jobs came in first at 29 percent. Cost of living followed at 24 percent. National security came in third at 14 percent, and concerns about the erosion of democracy and government overreach came in fourth at 13 percent. Immigration enforcement and ICE registered at just 6 percent. Border security, counted separately, came in at 7 percent. Even added together, the two immigration categories trail the top issues badly.

Generic Ballot, April

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Things look bad for the GOP.

From Emerson College Polling:

The April 2026 Emerson College Polling national survey of likely voters finds Democrats have a 10-point advantage on the generic congressional ballot, leading Republicans 50% to 40%. Ten percent are undecided.

“Democrats’ strength is driven by an increase in support among Hispanic voters, women, and independents,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said. “Hispanics break for Democrats by a 35-point margin, 61% to 26%, women by 21 points, 55% to 34%, and independents by 19 points, 50% to 31%.”

President Trump holds a 40% job approval rating and 56% disapproval among likely voters. This is a two-point decrease in the president’s approval and a five-point increase in disapproval since March. Data was collected before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

“Trump is underwater among Hispanic voters, 70% to 29%, compared to this time last year when they were split: 44% disapproved and 41% approved,” Kimball said.

Voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, 56% to 38%, foreign policy, 54% to 39%, and immigration policy, 53% to 43%.

Immigration Issues and the Texas Gerrymander

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

Myah Ward and Megan Messerly at Politico:

Home builders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They’re cautioning that Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too.

Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives made an electability argument, raising concerns to GOP leaders that support among Hispanic voters is eroding, particularly in regions that swung to Trump in 2024.

Hill Republicans have held separate meetings with White House officials to share their own electoral concerns.

This story is based on eight interviews with home builders, lawmakers and others familiar with the meetings.

“I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week.

...

The meetings this month came after Democrats crushed a Republican in a special runoff election for a state senate seat in a Trump-friendly district in Tarrant County, which includes most of Fort Worth, rattling Republicans nationally. New research from the American Business Immigration Coalition and Comité de 100, first obtained by POLITICO, shows how slipping support among Latino voters could affect Republican-leaning districts in Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida and California.

This study was buried in the POLITICO story. GOP could lose 6 seats (including 2 of their own!) they thought they gerrymandered Dems out of if Latinos swing 15% left https://t.co/HniLYDFYuc pic.twitter.com/Z6jtvnqDGm

— BeshearStan (@BeshearStan) February 14, 2026

Immigration Policy Threatens GOP Gains

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Shortest political honeymoon ever

— Mike Madrid (@madrid_mike) August 5, 2025

Marianna Sotomayor at WP:

Hispanic Republicans in the U.S. House say they are increasingly concerned that President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign could backfire with Latino voters, as they look for ways to protect some undocumented immigrants from deportation.

These Republicans expressed fear that the inroads Trump and the GOP made with Latino voters in 2024 could erode because of what they see as a haphazard approach to mass deportations, which are starting to disrupt their communities and threaten local businesses. They are growing especially anxious about the push to arrest and deport migrants whose only crime is crossing the border illegally.

“We’re all against criminals and gang members and those with deportation orders. But as this is starting to touch some folks who have known somebody who’s been here 20 years, more and more [people] are starting to see it, and there’s more and more response in the districts,” Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R), who represents a predominantly Hispanic district in South Florida, said in an interview.

The concern from Latino Republicans — along with some of their conservative colleagues — comes as the Trump administration, through White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, has directed immigration officials to make a minimum of 3,000 arrests daily.

And the leakage of Hispanic support could cause the looming Texas gerrymander to backfire.   Pooja Salhotra at NYT:

Texas Republicans are hoping that the surge of Hispanic support for President Trump in 2024, which was especially sharp in South Texas, will last through the 2026 midterm elections. They also hope that voters, Hispanic or not, in districts like the currently Democratic one around Laredo will not be overly angry about the Republicans’ aggressive mid-decade redistricting push, a hardball tactic to retain power in Washington that is being pressed by Mr. Trump.

More than a dozen conversations with voters in South Texas over the weekend showed that neither hope is a sure thing.

“The Republican Party is going to lose a lot of votes around here,” said Ricardo Sandoval, 35, a trucking and warehousing businessman in Laredo who supported Mr. Trump in November.

Mr. Sandoval said he agreed with Mr. Trump’s campaign promises for tax cuts, tariffs on China and an immigration crackdown along the border. But now, he said, he feels he was misled. The roller coaster of on-again-off-again tariffs has depressed cross-border trade and upended his business, pushed prices up and forced him to lay off more than a dozen employees. Mr. Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions have been disrespectful to the thousands of Hispanics who supported him, Mr. Sandoval said. And he said the Republicans’ redistricting effort in Texas was an unethical way to try to hold onto power.

“There’s a sense of betrayal,” he said.

Recent polling has suggested that misgivings like Mr. Sandoval’s might be spreading among Hispanic voters, especially those who say they are feeling the impact of rising prices for groceries and imported goods, as well as a slowdown in the labor market.

 

Immigration Politics Is Shifting

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

Lydia Saad at Gallup:

Americans have grown markedly more positive toward immigration over the past year, with the share wanting immigration reduced dropping from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. At the same time, a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.

These shifts reverse a four-year trend of rising concern about immigration that began in 2021 and reflect changes among all major party groups.

With illegal border crossings down sharply this year, fewer Americans than in June 2024 back hard-line border enforcement measures, while more favor offering pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.

These findings are based on a June 2-26 Gallup poll of 1,402 U.S. adults, including oversamples of Hispanic and Black Americans, weighted to match national demographics.

Mike Madrid:

The shift represents a large movement in political opinions driven by two critical developments that anyone paying attention could have seen coming.

The first factor is undeniably the success of border enforcement measures. With illegal border crossings down sharply this year, fewer Americans than in June 2024 back hard-line border enforcement measures, suggesting that voters’ primary concern about border security has been largely addressed.

The Trump administration’s swift action upon taking office appears to have satisfied many Americans’ desire for border control, creating space for more nuanced views on immigration policy overall. When the immediate crisis perception subsides, voters naturally begin to evaluate the broader implications and methods of immigration policy. This shift from crisis mode to policy evaluation mode has proven pivotal in reshaping public opinion.

But the most telling evidence of Republican overreach lies in the large political shift among Republicans themselves. And this is where things really get squirrelly. About two-thirds of Republicans now say immigrants are “a good thing” for the country, up from 39% last year. This 27-percentage-point swing among the party’s own base is precisely what happens when a political movement goes too far, too fast.

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Latinos, unsurprisingly, have demonstrated the most pronounced opposition to current policies. Trump’s 21% approval rating on the issue among Hispanic adults is below his 35% rating nationally, with the deficit likely reflecting that group’s low support for some of the administration’s signature immigration policies. This demographic shift has particular electoral significance, as Latino voters continue to represent a growing share of the American electorate.

Direct from the source. ICE and Border Patrol detain people "based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their accent."

Ok. Ethnic profiling. Got it. https://t.co/HXfsCJng0f

— Congressional Hispanic Caucus (@HispanicCaucus) July 11, 2025

Validated Voter Survey

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics

Hannah Hartig, Scott Keeter, Andrew Daniller, and Ted Van Green at Pew:

In his third run for president in 2024, Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris by 1.5 percentage points overall, winning 312 Electoral College votes and the national popular vote for the first time.

Trump won with a voter coalition that was more racially and ethnically diverse than in 2020 or 2016, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of the 2024 electorate.

• Among Hispanic voters, Trump battled to near parity in 2024 (51% Harris, 48% Trump) after losing to Joe Biden 61%-36% in 2020.
• Trump won 15% of Black voters – up from 8% four years earlier.
• Trump also did better among Asian voters. While a majority of Asian voters (57%) backed Harris, 40% supported Trump. This was a narrower margin than Biden’s in 2020 (70% to 30%).

These shifts were largely the result of differences in which voters turned out in the 2020 and 2024 elections. As in the past, a relatively small share of voters switched which party’s candidate they supported.

In 2024, Trump benefited from higher turnout among those who voted for him in 2020. He also held an edge over Harris among voters who did not vote four years earlier – a group that was considerably more diverse than those who voted in both elections.

And while Trump improved his performance among several groups in 2024, many of the demographic patterns in voting preferences that have dominated American politics for the last several decades remained evident last November:

Educational divide. In each of his campaigns, Trump has held an edge among voters without four-year college degrees. But his 14-point advantage among noncollege voters (56% to 42%) was double his margin in 2016. Harris won voters with college degrees by 57% to 41%, but that was smaller than Biden’s lead among this group in 2020.

A wider urban-rural gap. Trump won voters living in rural areas by 40 points (69%-29%), which was higher than his margins in 2020 or 2016. Harris’ advantage among voters living in urban areas was nearly as large (65% voted for Harris, 33% Trump).

Continued differences by religious attendance. Nearly two-thirds of voters who attend religious services monthly or more (64%) voted for Trump, while only about a third (34%) supported Harris. Harris held a narrower advantage (56%-43%) among the larger group of voters who attend services less frequently.

Methodology: 

 For this analysis, we surveyed 8,942 U.S. citizens ages 18 and older who are members of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP). We verified their turnout in the five general elections from 2016 to 2024 using commercial voter files that collect publicly available official state turnout records.

Reaching Latino Men

 Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the role of Latino voters.

 Senator Ruben Gallego spoke with David Frum:

One of the things we knew instinctively, because growing up Latino and working class: Latino men do not intently watch Univision, Telemundo. They don’t intently follow politics. They largely are disconnected from the normal avenues of—well, I would say that normal people kind of consume news and political news.

And one of the things that I emphasized on my campaign early on is a nontraditional way to reach these men, because you’ve got to understand the way these guys are. I mean, when I was in construction, I would wake up at 6 a.m., go to the site. Hopefully, it’d be done by 3 p.m. but probably not. So maybe you’re back at home by 5 p.m. You’re dirty as hell. You’re smelly as hell. You’re jumping in the shower, and then maybe, you know, you’re in time—you’ve made it home in time for dinner, right? You’re sitting down to dinner, and then you have probably a couple hours before you zonk out to start the next day.

Do you want to spend that time watching the news? Do you want to spend that time talking politics? No. You want to spend time with your family or with your friends, because your day sucked, and it’s going to suck again tomorrow. And so you do this rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

So where are they getting all their information from? Well, a couple places. Number one, they’re getting it from their other coworkers at worksites—which by the way, people forget when it comes to Latino men, the people they’re most likely to work with besides other Latino men are white working-class men, right? And white working-class men are very much politically involved and have a lot of political information that they’re getting. And they’re sharing it with their Latino coworkers, right?

And number two, they’re living off their phones through different social media, whether it’s Instagram, Snapchat, or all this kind of stuff, Twitter. So one of the things that we emphasize is trying to figure out how to get a message, a vibe, about who I was to these Latino male voters early on, so that way they understood, like, Ruben Gallego is a Democrat. Ruben Gallego says he’s for the working class. But then we also had a very strong cultural attachment. Like, He understands me. He actually worked at factories, worked in construction, understands the dignity of work, the responsibility of a man to his family, to provide for his family, and how important that is to me as a man.

And that kind of stuff, we are afraid to approach to get these men to start considering us as Democrats. And then, because we never talk about it, we never give them the dignity of allowing them to be family leaders and not making them feel bad about being family leaders. And then we’re surprised when, year after year, we don’t continue to have this conversation with us, they keep on moving away from us. And it’s a dumb trade-off, because we continue to do that because we think that somehow we’re going to piss off female voters.

And I don’t think that’s the case. Female voters are worried about their sons or daughters and their husbands. They’re worried about the fact that they’re becoming less social. They’re worried about the fact that they’re not actually being productive in life. And they want to have good husbands—heck, they want to have good ex-husbands that are involved with their kids’ lives, and they’re making good pay and paying their child support, things of that nature.

But for some reason, the Democrats have continued this trade-off, and it’s going to continue going until we realize: Making sure [of] people’s economic needs will cross all racial barriers and, if you do it rightly, will also cross these gender gaps that we’re seeing.

Hispanics and the Prosperity Gospel

Our next book will look at the 2024 election, which had fascinating demographic features.

Michelle Boorstein at The Washington Post:

The mix of hope, drive for success and belief in a God who rewards faith, sometimes with financial accomplishments, has become dominant across the United States and Latin America, experts on Latino religion say. The belief system is sometimes called “seed faith,” “health and wealth gospel,” or “prosperity gospel.”

In the past half-century, driven by larger-than-life pastors, it has overtaken other more traditional theologies centered on God’s priority being poor and disenfranchised people, some experts said. This belief system, they said, helps explain what exit polls showed was a significant shift among Latino Christian voters to Trump, who they see as an uber-successful, strong and God-focused strive.
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Nationally, network exit polls showed that between 2020 and 2024, Trump gained 14 points in support among Latinos, although a bare majority favored Harris, the Democratic nominee. In that same period, he gained 25 points among Latino Catholics and 18 points among Latino evangelical Protestants.
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The prosperity gospel is rooted in American Pentecostalism and evangelical Protestantism, but experts say it’s become huge across faith in general, and especially among unaffiliated, often online spiritual influencers. Trump grew up in the church of the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, whose book “The Power of Positive Thinking,” was a huge bestseller and is considered a classic of the prosperity gospel.

A Pew Research Center survey in 2014 found wide majorities of Protestants and Catholics in almost all of Latin America agreed that “God will grant wealth and good health to believers who have enough faith.” In the Dominican Republic — the ancestral or birth home for many in Allentown — 76 percent of Protestants agreed and 79 percent of Catholics did. The firm PRRI asked a similar question in March and found 44 percent of U.S. Latinos overall agreed, higher than any other group except African Americans. What that means politically is that wealthy candidates like Trump are seen by some as both faithful and worthy of emulation.

Harris and Hispanics

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020. 

At Politico, Megan Messerly and Daniella Diaz report that Harris is downplaying identity politics.

But after Democrats hemorrhaged support from Latinos over the last decade, Harris is attempting to chart a path away from identity politics, including in the way she’s courting Latino voters in states like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

In those battlegrounds, Harris campaign ads targeted at both English- and Spanish-speaking Latinos talk about the economy, high drug prices and crime. Harris, in a Spanish-language radio interview that aired earlier this week, stressed her support for stationing more immigration agents at the border and cracking down on the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.

“The Harris campaign understands what we’ve been saying about Latinos for a long time, which is that we’re not a monolith,” said Matt Tuerk, the first Latino mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania, a predominantly Latino community that was a recent stop on the campaign’s bus tour highlighting abortion rights. “We’re all Americans, too. We have a lot of the same basic values that every American has.”

Latino strategists on both sides of the aisle said the strategy reflects the diversity of Harris’ staff, which includes campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez, who is the granddaughter of the labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chávez. They say it also reflects a candidate who has a first-hand understanding of what it means to be defined by others on the basis of race or gender. And then there’s the politics: Immigration is one of Democrats’ weak points, and Harris has adopted tough-on-the-border rhetoric as a counter to the immigration-focused attacks that Donald Trump has made a hallmark of his political campaigns since his first run for president in 2016.

Harris and Hispanics

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020. 

Russell Contreras at Axios:

Harris' support among Latinos is polling in the mid- to upper 50s — a big improvement from what President Biden's numbers had been this year, but a signal to Democrats that they have work to do.

Zoom in: Latino voters make up a politically, geographically and culturally diverse electorate in which generational differences also affect voting patterns.Trump has helped increase Latino support for Republicans, partly by appealing to those who support his economic policies, oppose abortion and favor crackdowns on illegal immigration. But many Latinos have been turned off by Trump's heated rhetoric about immigrants and his plan for mass deportations.

Harris has moved quickly to try to appeal to Latino voters — particularly in the Sun Belt, the hottest battleground for them.This week Harris' campaign released an ad emphasizing her family's immigrant roots. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had campaign stops in the Southwest that included a big rally in the Phoenix area.

One encouraging sign for Harris' campaign: an endorsement Friday by the political arm of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a generally nonpartisan group that hadn't endorsed a presidential candidate in its nearly 100-year history.

By the numbers: Since Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, when reliable exit poll data on Latinos were first collected, most Latino voters have backed Democrats. But that support has fluctuated.

"Everything is on the margins, right?"

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the politics of immigration, economic policy and crime.  On these issues, Biden does not have messaging problems.  He has reality problems.

Edward-Isaac Dovere and Priscilla Alvarez, CNN:

Looking to shore up Latino votes in Nevada and Arizona for his reelection campaign, President Joe Biden is on the verge of soon following up last week’s executive action aimed at curbing border crossings with another move focused on providing legal status for long-term undocumented immigrants who are married to American citizens.

Though final details have not been decided, officials are reviewing an existing legal authority known as “parole in place” that would shield select undocumented immigrants from deportation and allow them to work legally in the country as they seek citizenship. The orders have not yet been presented to Biden himself for review.

Polling reviewed by top aides in the White House and the president’s reelection headquarters are helping seal the deal.

For Biden in Arizona, “Everything is on the margins, right?” said Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. “My sense is it should help.”

Estimates put the number of people who could be directly affected at 750,000 to 800,000, with a reverberating effect among spouses, children, extended family and friends — and predominantly Latinos. That’s millions of potential votes in just Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia. Those are all battleground states, all home to many Latinos and all looking likely to be decided in November by slivers of the electorate.

Biden and Niche Media

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun. The nomination phase has effectively ended. 

Oliver Darcy at CNN:

During his trip to New York City last week, President Joe Biden sat down for a rare joint interview alongside former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

But the interview, which received significant attention, was not with a national news organization. Neither was it with a local newspaper or outlet. It was with the comedy podcast, “Smartless,” hosted by the actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett.

The decision to speak with the Hollywood trio, while jilting the traditional press in the process, is emblematic of Biden’s media strategy as he faces a high-stakes reelection with democracy itself on the line. While a caricature has been painted of the president holed up in the White House dodging the media spotlight, he is actually participating in a fair share of interviews — just not with the Beltway press.

In fact, Biden has engaged in a number of interviews this year, particularly with the Black and Hispanic press. Facing sagging poll numbers with Black Americans, Biden has granted at least 10 interviews with media outlets reaching the community this year, most of them with local radio stations during the drive time hours. Biden has also participated in two interviews with Hispanic radio outlets in 2024 and is set to sit down with Univision’s Enrique Acevedo this week, Adrian Carrasquillo reported Monday for Vanity Fair.

“People in D.C. and New York may not always see it,” Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign communications director, told me by phone. “But you know who is seeing it? The voters we are trying to reach.”

RNC Shutters Hispanic Centers

Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

 Adrian Carrasquillo at The Messenger:

During the 2022 cycle, the Republican Party made a commitment to Latino voters that hadn't been seen before, touting nearly two dozen RNC Hispanic Community Centers in a high stakes gambit to attract Hispanic voters that have drifted away from the Democratic Party.

In 2021, upon opening a center in San Antonio, Rep. Tony Gonzales said the centers were critical to unlocking wins in Democratic districts. "Many of these communities have felt forgotten by the Republican Party for a very long time," he said then.

On September 9, 2022, during the sprint to the election, the Republican National Committee opened a center in Phoenix alongside Senate candidate Blake Masters, with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel declaring: “This center is part of our party’s commitment to building relationships with the Hispanic community."

The community centers were pitched as a dream intersection of fun, civic life, candidate recruitment, and GOTV muscle, with the party touting Thanksgiving potlucks, toy drives, religious services, crypto workshops, and even an ugly sweater Christmas party with Folklorico dancing in San Antonio. Community centers continued to pop up in Hispanic communities and positive headlines continued to flow.

But four months after the grand opening of the Phoenix center, it was closed, along with most of the other centers, the RNC confirmed after The Messenger reached out. While the RNC touted opening 20 Hispanic community centers during the 2022 cycle, it said there are only five centers currently open, two of which were opened in 2023.

GOP's 2022 Turnout Edge

Our more recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses voter demographics .

 Hannah Hartig and colleagues at Pew:

A new Pew Research Center analysis of verified voters and nonvoters in 2022, 2020, 2018 and 2016 finds that partisan differences in turnout – rather than vote switching between parties – account for most of the Republican gains in voting for the House last year.

Overall, 68% of those who voted in the 2020 presidential election turned out to vote in the 2022 midterms. Former President Donald Trump’s voters turned out at a higher rate in 2022 (71%) than did President Joe Biden’s voters (67%).

... 

 Other key findings:

• Voters under 30 continued to strongly support the Democratic Party, voting 68% to 31% for Democratic candidates. But this margin was somewhat narrower than in 2018. Republicans benefitted more from significant drop off in voter turnout among younger age groups between 2018 and 2022, since young voters tend to support Democrats. Voters under 30 accounted for 10% of the electorate in 2022 – similar to their share of all voters in 2018 (11%), but down from 2020 (14%).
• Ideological polarization by party was nearly complete in 2022: Only 1% of self-described conservative Republicans voted for Democratic House candidates and less than 1% of liberal Democrats voted Republican.
• Voting in person on Election Day increased sharply in 2022 compared with 2020. More voters reported casting ballots in person on Election Day in both parties, but the share remained much higher among Republican voters (51%) than among Democratic voters (34%).
• White voters without college degrees made up a majority (54%) of Republican voters in 2022, compared with 27% of Democratic voters. Yet these voters made up a somewhat greater share of GOP voters in 2020 (58%) and 2018 (57%).
• Voters ages 50 and older were a larger share of the total in 2022 (64%) than in any of the past three elections. 70% of Republican voters were 50 or older, as were 57% of Democratic voters.
• Hispanic voters continued to support Democrats, but by a much smaller margin than in 2018: Hispanic voters favored Democratic candidates by a 21-point margin in 2022, compared with a 47-point margin in 2018. This change was driven by asymmetric changes in voter turnout among Hispanic adults, rather than changing preferences among individual Hispanic voters.
• Black voters continued to support Democrats by overwhelming margins: 93% voted for Democrats in the midterms while 5% supported Republicans. This is similar to levels of support in 2020, 2018 and 2016. Black voters made up 9% of the electorate in both 2022 and 2018 and 11% of the electorate in 2020.
• The Republican advantage among White evangelical Protestants was somewhat larger in 2022 than in the past three elections. 86% supported Republican candidates in 2022 and only 12% voted Democratic.

Mixed Red: WWC Down, Hispanics Up

Our more recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses voter demographics and the diploma divide.

 Thomas B. Edsall at NYT:

One of the most significant developments in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election has emerged largely under the radar. From 2016 to 2022, the number of white people without college degrees — the core of Donald Trump’s support — has fallen by 2.1 million.

Over the same period, the number of white people who have graduated from college — an increasingly Democratic constituency — has grown by 13.3 million.

These trends do not bode well for the prospects of Republican candidates, especially Trump. President Biden won whites with college degrees in 2020, 51-48, but Trump won by a landslide, 67-32, among whites without degrees, according to network exit polls.

...

From 2006 to 2022, the Public Religion Research Institute found, the white evangelical protestant share of the population fell from 23.0 percent to 13.9 percent. Over the same period, the nonreligious share of the population rose from 16.0 to 26.8 percent.

Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, found that the nonreligious can be broken down into three groups: atheists, who are the most Democratic, voting 85-11 for Biden over Trump; followed by agnostics, 78-18 for Biden; and those Burge calls “nothing in particular,” 63-35 for Biden.

Ruy Teixera at WP:

Catalist data confirm a nationwide shift among Latinos in 2020. The Democrats’ overall margin among this group dropped by 18 points relative to 2016. Cubans had the largest shift of 26 points, but Puerto Ricans moved by 18 points to Trump, Dominicans by 16 points and Mexicans by 12 points. An overall weak spot for Democrats was among Latino men who gave Trump a shocking 44 percent of their two-party vote in 2020.

The unusually broad shift raised the question: Could the trend continue? Since then, the 2022 election contained both good and bad omens for Democrats. The good news is that, with the exception of Florida, they did not lose any further ground among Hispanics. The bad news is that they didn’t win back the ground they lost.

Since then, polls consistently find that Hispanic voters prefer Republicans to Democrats on inflation and handling the economy. Nearly all — 86 percent — Hispanics say economic conditions are only fair or poor and about three-quarters say the same thing about their personal financial situation. By 2 to 1 they say President Biden’s policies are hurting, not helping, them and their families. In a just-released 6,000 respondent poll from the Survey Center on American Life (SCAL) on evolving party coalitions, almost two-thirds believe Biden has accomplished not that much or little or nothing during his time in office.

Six years ago,at TNR, John Judis wrote that Democrats cannot count on a nonwhite majority to bring them back into the majority:

Whiteness is not a genetic category, after all; it’s a social and political construct that relies on perception and prejudice. A century ago, Irish, Italians, and Jews were not seen as whites. “This town has 8,000,000 people,” a young Harry Truman wrote his cousin upon visiting New York City in 1918. “7,500,000 of ’em are of Israelish extraction. (400,000 wops and the rest are white people.)” But by the time Truman became president, all those immigrant groups were considered “white.” There’s no reason to imagine that Latinos and Asians won’t follow much the same pattern.

In fact, it’s already happening. In the 2010 Census, 53 percent of Latinos identified as “white,” as did more than half of Asian Americans of mixed parentage. In future generations, those percentages are almost certain to grow. According to a recent Pew study, more than one-quarter of Latinos and Asians marry non-Latinos and non-Asians, and that number will surely continue to climb over the generations.

The God Gap

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

 Ryan Burge at Politico:

The overall sense that arises from the Religion Census is that the Democrats will continue to gain ground in suburban counties that are predominantly white and where religion is fading in size and importance. In so-called Blue Wall states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Republicans will have a harder time winning over voters in suburban Milwaukee, Detroit, or Philadelphia with messaging about six-week abortion bans. On the other hand, the shifts in the religious landscape make it more likely that the GOP can hold off Democratic advances in important states like Texas and Florida. As more Hispanic immigrants come to those areas who are deeply religious and culturally conservative, Democratic messaging on social issues will not appeal to these types of votes.

It’s hard to overstate this point. In 1990, just seven percent of Americans were non-religious — 30 years later, the “nones” had quadrupled. And new data indicates that nearly half of Generation Z has no religious affiliation. In 2020, 46 percent of the votes cast for Biden came from non-religious voters. That could easily be half of his base in a bid for reelection. Both parties have been slow to react to this changing religious landscape. Where the remaining religious Americans live and vote is a crucial question for the electoral map in 2024 and beyond. Both parties are ignoring these changing dynamics at their own peril.

HIspanic Voters in 2022

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.

Philip Wallach at AEI:

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, there was a great deal of speculation about how Hispanic citizens would vote. Some pre-election polls showed them swinging dramatically toward Republicans, perhaps even coming close to splitting their vote evenly between the two parties, which would have represented a seismic shift in American politics.

Such a massive shift did not take place—and its failure to materialize is one of the reasons that Republicans are facing disappointingly small gains in the House. But we should nevertheless note that Republicans apparently had their best year with Hispanic voters since 2004. CNN exit polls indicate that what was a 40-point Democratic margin among Hispanic voters as recently as 2018 has now shrunk by almost half, to 60-39 in favor of Democrats. Put another way, one in 10 Hispanic voters has shifted their vote from Democrats to Republicans over the last four years.

...

Whereas the 328 districts without high Hispanic population saw Republicans overperform expectations by an average of 0.5 points, in the 73 high-Hispanic-population districts Republicans overperformed expectations by an average of 5.3 points. That offers a nice confirmation of what the exit polls are telling us. High-Hispanic districts have become more Republican.

The Politics of Affirmative Action

 As we note in Divided We Stand, the defeat of California's Proposition 16 was the most underreported political story of 2020.

John Ellis at WSJ:

What nobody realized was that the entire country had become increasingly hostile to the use of race in such decisions. A 2022 Pew Research Center poll found that 74% of Americans oppose the use of race in college admissions. Even more surprising, 68% of Hispanics, 63% of Asians and 59% of blacks also opposed it. The same applied to both political parties, with 87% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats objecting.

But as the public attempted to slam the door shut on racial preferences, the universities were busy trying to open it wide. The stealthy end-runs around the law gave way to support for “equity”: the desire for racial proportionality in all things—never mind that the Supreme Court has held that quotas in college admissions are unlawful. Accordingly, many colleges have begun to abandon the use of test scores in applications.

In line with this hardening of campus attitudes, increasingly powerful diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies arose to achieve these aims. Consider The University of California, Berkeley, which now has a Division of Equity and Inclusion, a title that gives it a standing on campus equivalent to its Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. The university’s division has an array of highly paid managers. Eight have the title “director,” one of which is for “diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging,” and there are several assistant vice chancellors. Similar offices abound on campuses across the country, where they are major actors in promoting all manner of progressive causes, from social justice to critical race theory and anticapitalism.

The Blue Bubble of White Educated Liberals

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.

Ruy Teixeira:

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Democrats’ emphasis on social and democracy issues, while catnip to some socially liberal, educated voters, leaves many working class and Hispanic voters cold. Their concerns are more mundane and economically-driven. This is despite the fact that many of these voters are in favor of moderate abortion rights and gun control and disapprove of the January 6th events. But these issues are just not salient for them in the way they are for the Democrats’ educated and most fervent supporters.

...

Strong progressives clearly live in a different world than Hispanic and working class voters. In strong progressive world, views on abortion, gun control and January 6th fit neatly into an overarching set of sociocultural beliefs that are highly salient to them and increasingly drive the Democratic party’s priorities and rhetoric. Hispanic and working class voters lack this overarching set of beliefs—in fact, don’t share many of them—and are much more concerned with the basics of their material lives. It should thus be no surprise that these voters are increasingly losing interest in the party of abortion, gun control and January 6th. As Josh Kraushaar notes:

• Democrats are becoming the party of upscale voters concerned more about issues like gun control and abortion rights.
• Republicans are quietly building a multiracial coalition of working-class voters, with inflation as an accelerant.

Exaggerated? Maybe. But consider this: between the 2012 and 2020 elections—which Democrats won by similar popular vote margins—Democrats’ advantage among nonwhite working class voters decreased by 19 margin points (Catalist data). Over the same period, Democrats’ performance among white college-educated voters improved by 16 margin points. So perhaps we’re just on trend

David French:

Hispanic Americans also tend to possess strong religious values. In October 2020 the New York Times’s Jennifer Medina published a prescient report highlighting Trump-supporting Hispanic Evangelicals. Called “Latino, Evangelical, and Politically Homeless,” it featured this insightful sentence: “Hispanic evangelicals identify as religious first and foremost.”

Yes. Absolutely. That’s exactly why a politics focused on mobilizing by race/ethnicity will not reach them, especially when identity politics is paired with hard-left cultural positions and hostility for traditional religion. Hispanic voters will find a religious connection with many, many white Republicans, and that religious connection can prove far more culturally and politically consequential than any effort to create a politics based on ethnic or racial identity.

The disproportionate secularization of white Democrats represents a danger for the Democratic Party, for the country, and for American religion. The danger for the Democrats is clear. America may be more secular than it’s been in generations, but it is still a quite religious country. It’s far more religious than any European nation. It’s far more religious than Canada or the rest of the anglosphere nations. And it’s going to remain extraordinarily religious for the foreseeable future.

A party that’s culturally disconnected from (or perhaps even scornful of) traditional religious faith is going to alienate itself from tens of millions of voters it could otherwise reach.

College America, Non-College America, and Shifting Party Bases

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.

“The GOP is trading soccer moms for Walmart dads.” https://t.co/CgHv5h3YyU

— Bruce Mehlman (@bpmehlman) July 14, 2022

 Nate Cohn at NYT:

For the first time in a Times/Siena national survey, Democrats had a larger share of support among white college graduates than among nonwhite voters — a striking indication of the shifting balance of political energy in the Democratic coalition. As recently as the 2016 congressional elections, Democrats won more than 70 percent of nonwhite voters while losing among white college graduates.

What is your preference for the outcome of the 2022 congressional elections?

Which Party Different Groups of Voters Support

For the first time in a Times/Siena national survey, Democrats won a larger share of white college graduates than nonwhite voters.

Gender

	DEM.	REP.	OTHER/ UNDEC.
Female 52% of RVs	44%	34%	21%
Male 46%	38%	47%	15%

Race

	DEM.	REP.	OTHER/ UNDEC.
White 65% of RVs	37%	47%	17%
White, no coll. 39%	23%	54%	23%
White, coll. 26%	57%	36%	7%
Black 10%	78%	3%	19%
Hispanic 13%	41%	38%	21%
Other 8%	34%	39%	27%

Age

	DEM.	REP.	OTHER/ UNDEC.
Age 18 to 29 16% of RVs	46%	28%	26%
Age 30 to 44 22%	52%	31%	18%
Age 45 to 64 32%	35%	50%	15%
Age 65+ 24%	39%	45%	16%

Education

	DEM.	REP.	OTHER/ UNDEC.
College grad. 35% of RVs	56%	32%	12%
No four-yr. deg. 63%	33%	45%	22%

Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll of 849 registered voters from July 5-7. All figures are rounded. Some respondents did not provide demographic information.