The LAT doesn’t point it out, but there’s a huge gap between the preferences of “white” voters and “Latino” voters in the paper’s poll when it comes to cutting pension benefits for public workers or raising their retirement age. On the issue of cutting retirement benefits of future government employees, whites are 62-32 in favor. Latinos are 53-39 against. On raising the retirement age, the gap’s even bigger: whites favor it by a margin of 33 percentage points (63/30). Latinos oppose it by a margin of 16 points (39/55). Yet on other big vs. small govenrment budget issues–e.g. capping state spending–the two groups are very close together.
Similarly, when it comes to the popularity of “labor unions,” both whites and Latinos were split down the middle. But change the question to public employee unions and the gap reemerges: whites’ opinions are 6 points unfavorable, Latinos 13 points favorable.
What this suggests to me is that it’s not so much that Latinos, more than whites, favor government spending. It’s that Latinos, more than whites, identify and sympathize with the people who are employed by government– perhaps because, more than whites, they see government as a place where they or people they know might work.
Got a better theory? …