Republicans, not Democrats, are seeing greater erosion of Latino voter support, owing in part to the overturning of the landmark ruling that legalized abortion, according to a Democratic pollster on Wednesday.
According to Fernand Amandi, a principal with Bendixen & Amandi, in the key states of Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, which have competitive gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races this year, Latinos support abortion legalization by large margins: by 30 points in Arizona, 40 points in Nevada, and 41 points in Pennsylvania.
These figures are “signs that to me suggest Republicans overreached and are alienating the Hispanic vote,” according to Amandi.
However, he emphasized that Florida presents a different scenario.
“Many people should be concerned about Florida if they want to see Democrats succeed. In Florida, there is an erosion problem. In Florida, we have lost a lot of ground. However, I do not expect other states to experience Florida-style reversals “He stated.
If the performance of Latino voters with Barack Obama in 2012 — when he received 70% of the Latino vote — is used as a yardstick, Amandi believes Democrats have suffered at the presidential level.
However, he claims that recent polling indicates that the Democratic Party’s Hispanic vote is on the decline. The poll of Latinos in Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania was conducted in mid-May, prior to the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but after a draft of the opinion had been leaked. Six hundred Latinos were polled in each state, with a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.
Latinos who said the Roe v. Wade decision would influence their voting decision in the November midterm elections were more likely to vote Democrat. In Arizona, 45% of all Hispanic voters said they were more likely to vote Democrat, compared to 40% in Nevada and 45% in Pennsylvania. A much smaller percentage, 15%, said the ruling would make them more likely to vote Republican, while the rest said it would have no impact.
Amandi and Democratic pollster Matt Barreto, who worked on Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, spoke to reporters at a briefing hosted by America’s Voice, an immigrant advocacy group.
Their goal was to reshape the narrative that has been repeated since the 2020 elections, namely that Democrats’ Hispanic vote share is declining overall.
“We have not seen any evidence of a shift, of a realignment on partisanship, on ideology in new data in 2021 and 2022,” said Barretto, co-founder of BSP Research and formerly with Latino Decisions polling firm. “It’s more that the economy’s frustration may still be lingering, and it’s something Democrats should keep working on and talking about.”
According to Amandi, the Republican brand and Donald Trump performed worse than Democrats and President Joe Biden in each of the three states where Latinos were polled.
Democratic candidates in U.S. Senate races lead Hispanic voters in those states by margins that are more similar to their leads in 2010 than in 2018. According to polling data, candidates in gubernatorial races also have large leads among Latino voters.
Amandi stated that his polling revealed a high level of enthusiasm for voting and predicted a “record Hispanic turnout in terms of numbers in this election.”
