After One Year of Biden's Presidency, Hispanic Voters Now Evenly Divided Between the Parties
A new poll found Hispanic voters are now evenly split in their support between the Republican and Democratic parties.
The Wall Street Journal survey found that 37 percent of Hispanics would support the GOP congressional candidate and 37 percent said they would favor the Democrat, with 22 percent undecided.
Hispanics were also evenly divided concerning a hypothetical 2024 match-up between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, with 44 percent saying they’d back the incumbent and 43 percent backing the Republican challenger.
The poll found support for Republicans strongest among Hispanic men, with 45 percent saying they’d vote for the GOP candidates, while only 29 percent of Hispanic women said they would.
“Hispanic men said Republicans had the better economic policy, by a margin of 17 points. Hispanic women, by contrast, said Democrats had better economic plans, by a 10-point margin,” the Journal reported.
Overall, among those Hispanics surveyed, 42 percent approve of Biden’s job performance as president, while 54 percent disapprove.
?? New poll from @WSJ shows a seismic shift among Hispanic voters:
☑️ Biden’s approval rating among Hispanics is 12 pts underwater
☑️ For the first time, Hispanics are now evenly split on the 2022 Congressional ballot
☑️ Biden is only +1 in a 2024 rematch with Trump pic.twitter.com/dHX1BPM2M0
— Giancarlo Sopo (@GiancarloSopo) December 8, 2021
The Democratic data firm Catalist determined that Biden carried 61 percent of Latino voters in 2020; however, Trump made significant gains among the demographic, gaining 8 percentage points nationwide from his 2016 showing.
[firefly_poll]
CNN’s Harry Enten noted that Trump did “considerably better” in key areas, such as heavily Hispanic Miami-Dade County and south Texas.
Democrat Hillary Clinton carried Miami-Dade, which is approximately 70 percent Hispanic, by nearly 30 points in 2016, but Biden clung on to it by just over 7 points.
Politico reported that Starr County, Texas, 96 percent Hispanic, experienced the biggest tilt right of any place in the country, where Republicans gained 55 percent compared to 2016.
Trump lost the county by just 5 points.
Neighboring Zapata County — which is 94 percent Hispanic and like Starr County on the U.S./Mexico border — flipped from blue to red in 2020, with Trump winning by 5 percent.
Clinton carried the county by a whopping 33 points in 2016.
Enten chronicled that Trump made double-digit gains in heavily-Hispanic communities, even in deep blue states like California, Illinois and Massachusetts.
GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin continued the trend Trump started in 2020 in last month’s Virginia governor’s race.
Exit polling by the Associated Press VoteCast found that 55 percent of Latinos voted for the Republican, while 43 percent backed Democrat Terry McAuliffe.
Democratic pollster John Anzalone, whose company conducted the new Journal poll along with the firm of Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, said in response to the survey results, “Latinos are more and more becoming swing voters … They’re a swing vote that we’re going to have to fight for.”
Fabrizio observed, “This says to me that the economy matters, particularly to Hispanic men. The economy and economic factors are driving them” to support the GOP.
The Journal survey was conducted from Nov. 16-22 and consisted of 1,500 registered voters, including 165 Hispanics. The margin of error for the Hispanic sample was +/- 7.6 percentage points.
