The estimable Ronald Brownstein has written a long article in the Atlantic about the Hispanic vote, comparing 2016 and 2020, and speculating about the future. “Generally speaking, the sources showed Hillary Clinton beating Trump among Latinos by nearly 40 percentage points in 2016. In 2020, they showed Joe Biden beating Trump by around 30 percentage points.” The article needs to be read in its entirety. He mentions the “holy trinity” of Latino priorities: jobs, health care, and education. My take can be summarized as follows: culturally, economically, and politically, a lot of Hispanics are natural to fit into a moderate Republican Party.
He writes, “Latinos will be entering the electorate in huge numbers for the foreseeable future: Mark Hugo Lopez, the Pew Research Center’s director of race and ethnicity research, forecasts that about 1 million U.S.-born Latinos will turn 18 each year through 2027. That number will shrink only slightly through the early 2030s, to a little under 950,000 people annually. The nonpartisan States of Change project anticipates that Latinos will grow from about one in seven eligible voters today to nearly one in five by the middle of the next decade.”