Democrats are at risk of major losses among Hispanics in Tuesday’s midterm elections, demographer Ruy Teixeira wrote Thursday.
Teixeira, the co-author of the 2002 book “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” argued in a Substack post that Hispanics are turning toward the Republican Party due to concerns about kitchen table issues, including inflation, crime and immigration.
Republican Texas Rep. Mayra Flores won a June special election in a majority Hispanic district in a part of Texas that Democrats had controlled for more than a century. Fellow Hispanic Republicans Cassy Garcia and Monica de la Cruz are also running in the Rio Grande Valley in a pair of districts that the National Republican Congressional Committee considers targets.
“It is becoming clearer and clearer that Democrats have seriously erred by lumping Hispanics in with ‘people of color’ and assuming they embraced a litany of liberal causes around race and other issues that are dear to the hearts of Democratic activists,” Teixeira wrote.
Hispanic realignment: Ruy Teixeira has the numbers and they tell a dire story for Democrats https://t.co/ZBVbRVd3z4
— Walter Olson (@walterolson) November 3, 2022
Democrats have doubled down on appeals to minority groups in recent election cycles, to mixed results. During the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton famously declined to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan in the closing weeks of the race. Instead, she scheduled appearances in Texas and Arizona, states that she lost by nine and 3.5 points, respectively. (RELATED: One Man In Hillary’s Campaign Warned She Could Lose, And Everybody Ignored Him)
In 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win Arizona since 1996 and the first to win Georgia since 1992. He received support from 59% of Hispanic voters, according to Pew, while Donald Trump garnered 38%. Biden also took back the blue wall states Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, improving Democratic margins with non-college educated white voters by four points.
The belief of some Democratic activists that the party could win without white-working class voters, Teixeira wrote in 2020, is based on a misinterpretation of his book.
“Building this majority would require a very broad coalition, including many voters drawn from the white working class. This crucial nuance was quickly lost. And so, many Democratic pundits, operatives and elected officials have falsely come to believe that demographics are destiny,” he said at the time.
Hispanic voters consider the economy their most important issue, according to an October Washington Post/Ipsos poll. The same survey found that 63% of Hispanic voters will support Democrats in the midterms, while 36% will support Republicans. 53% of Hispanic voters view Biden’s job performance favorably, while 46% view it disfavorably.