Talarico Has Nearly 7-Point Lead Over Paxton Among Texas Hispanic Business Owners

 

The chart above reflects the results of the survey the U.S. Hispanic Business Council did between June 2 and June 15 of 1,012 Hispanic business owners in Texas.

Recent Poll Shows Hispanics Are Upset With How Things Are Going

 

The charts above are from the Axios / Ipsos / Telemundo Poll -- done between October 21st and 27th of a nationwide sample of 1,123 Hispanic adults, with a 3.2 point margin of error.

Trump's Standing With Hispanic Voters Is Steadily Deteriorating

The chart above is from the Global Strategy Group Poll -- done between August 26th and September 4th of a nationwide sample of 800 Hispanic registered voters, with a 3.5 point margin of error.

Hispanic Voters Prefer Harris Over Trump

 

The charts above are from a Pew Research Center survey that questioned 691 Hispanic registered voters between August 26th and September 2nd, with a 5.2 point margin of error.

These three charts are from the NBC News / Telemundo / CNBC Poll -- done between September 16th and 23rd of a nationwide sample of 1,000 Hispanic registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

United States Hispanics And The Spanish Language

The charts above are from a Pew Research Center survey -- done between August 1st and 14th of a nationwide sample of 3,029 Hispanic adults, with a 2.7 point margin of error.

Facts About Hispanics In The United States

 

These charts are from the Pew Research Center.

Voters Of Color Are Voting GOP - But Not In Large Numbers

The talking heads of cable news have been making a big deal of a shift of voters of color to the GOP. But the truth is that shift is small, and most still favor Democrats by a large margin. Here's the analysis of the situation by Perry Bacon, Jr. in The Washington Post: 

Asian American, Black and Latino voters have shifted to the right over the past decade. That should delight Republican Party officials and worry Democratic ones. At the same time, voters of color have favored Democrats by more than 35 percentage points in every recent election. The news media and others who analyze politics shouldn’t emphasize the rightward shift so much that they obscure that these voting blocs remain very Democratic-leaning.

Here’s what is really going on with voters of color:

Asian, Black and Latino Americans combined in 2020 to vote around 73 percent for Joe Biden, compared to 25 percent for then-President Donald Trump, according to the political data firm Catalist. If only those three groups voted, Democrats would likely have won every single state. Democrats also overwhelmingly won among those three groups combined in 2022.

U.S. politics remains a contest between a Republican Party that is much more non-Hispanic White (about 85 percent) than the Democratic Party (about 60 percent White) and the country overall (also about 60 percent White).

Yet Biden’s 2020 margin was a notable decline from President Barack Obama’s in 2012, when those three groups chose the Democratic incumbent over Republican nominee Mitt Romney by a combined 81 to 17 percent. And because U.S. national elections are so close, small shifts matter.

The electoral trajectories of Asian, Black and Latino voters are not the same.

Black voters. Before 2008, between 85 and 90 percent of Black votersusually backed the Democratic presidential candidate. That support increased to around 95 percent in 2008 and 2012, likely because some Black Republicans and Black people who don’t usually vote embraced Obama. Black support for Democrats is now back to pre-2008 levels.

The Obama-era uptick among Black voters, who are about 11 percent of the electorate, was helpful for Democrats. But with such high levels of overall support, it’s hard to argue that there is dissatisfaction among Black voters with the Democratic Party.

Asian voters. Because Asians are a small percentage of voters (around 4 percent), their slight rightward shift hasn’t altered national election results too much. Also, there is nothing new about some Asians being open to voting Republican. They were about equally split between the two parties in the 1990s.

Latino voters. Latinos are about 10 percent of the electorate and an even larger bloc in states such as Florida and Nevada. If Latinos were shifting to the left, Democrats wouldn’t be struggling to eke out wins in Arizona and Nevada and would be more competitive in Florida and Texas.

The Latino vote has never been overwhelmingly Democratic. George W. Bush won about the same percentage of the Latino vote in his presidential campaigns as Trump did in 2020.

But Latinos’ shift to the right has been surprising. Democrats over the past decade have pushed more lenient immigration policies in part to appeal to Latino voters. Meanwhile, Republicans have abandoned Bush’s pro-immigrant posture in favor of “build the wall” Trump-style politics. Most political observers, myself included, didn’t expect Latino voters to be so accepting of this version of the Republican Party.

Among White voters, there has been a clear pattern: Those with four-year college degrees and more liberal attitudes on issues such as immigration are becoming Democrats; those without degrees who are more conservative on issues of identity and race are becoming Republicans. There is also a huge religious divide — White people who aren’t Christians are much more likely to be Democrats.

Among voters of color, it’s not really an education story — Democrats are losing ground among those with four-year degrees and without them.

There is a big ideological component. Asian, Black and Latino Americans (along with White people) who describe themselves as conservative were significantly more likely to back Trump in 2020, compared with 2016, according to research from political scientists John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch and Lynn Vavreck. Racial issues are a part of this conservatism — Republicans are winning voters of color who are more skeptical of, say, the Black Lives Matter movement.

And there are important divides within each racial and ethnic group. Black women are still backing Democrats at near Obama-era levels, while 10 to 15 percent of Black men are now supporting Republicans.

Among Latino voters, a big divide is religion. Latinos who are Catholic or who aren’t religious are much more Democratic-leaning than Latino Protestants are. Another divide is geography. Latinos in some states (Florida and Texas for example) are more conservative than in others (California).

Asian Americans who describe themselves as “born-again” Christians are more Republican than those who don’t.

Overall, the good news for Republicans is that the United States’ growing Asian and Latino populations are not voting overwhelmingly Democratic the way Black people do. So they are not creating a voters-of-color colossus that flips states like Texas and ensures perpetual Democratic victories. That was a doomsday scenario for Republicans that a few years ago seemed like a real possibility.

The good news for Democrats is that the clear majority of Asian, Black and Latino voters are still backing them, lifting the party to victories in states such as Georgia and Virginia where White voters are mostly Republicans. The increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the country has been an electoral boon for Democrats — just less of one than was expected.

The big question is what happens next. Have all of the Asian, Black and Latino voters who were open to backing Republicans already shifted — or could the Democratic margin among these voters further decline next year? Alternatively, could Democrats win back some lost ground among these groups?

I am not sure — and I am not sure anyone else is either. The move to the right among voters of color shows that demographics are not destiny. But their strong Democratic tilt shows that demographics still matter.

22 States Have Never Sent A Black Woman To Congress

 These charts are from the Pew Research Center.

9 Charts That Will Make Dems Feel Better About Hispanics

 These charts are from the Unidos/US National Survey Of Latino Voters -- done between July 20th and August 1st of a nationwide sample of 2,540 registered Hispanic voters, with a 1.9 point margin of error.

Results From Poll Of U.S. Hispanics

These charts are from the recent Axios / Ipsos / Telemundo Poll -- done between June 9th and 18th of a nationwide sample of 1,018 Hispanic adults, with a 3.8 point margin of error.

Hispanics Prefer Democrats But There's Still Work To Be Done

 The chart above is from a poll of 1,005 Hispanics nationwide between March 7th and 18th by the Axios / Ipsos Latino Poll. The margin of error is 3.7 points.

The poll shows that Hispanics prefer Democrats, but not by as much as some Democrats think. Democrats will likely win the Hispanic vote, but they need to win it by a large margin and that might not happen. 

Democrats would be making a huge mistake to take the Hispanic vote for granted. There is much work still to be done to win over Hispanics.

Poverty In The United States Got Worse In 2020

 

The chart above is from the Economic Policy Institute. It shows that poverty increased in the United States in 2020. The poverty rate rose by 0.9 points to 11.4% for the entire population. It was even worse for children -- rising by 1.7 points to 16.1%. How can the richest nation on the planet justify over 16% of its children living in poverty?

The poverty rate was also different for different groups, even though it rose in 2020 for all groups. Poverty among Whites rose by 0.9 points to 8.2%. Poverty among Hispanics rose by 1.3 points to 17.0%. And poverty among Blacks rose by 0.6 points to 19.3%. We still have a lot to do to make the economy fair to everyone.

63% Of GOP Base Says Whites Are Discriminated Against

 

The chart above reflects the results of a survey by the Pew Research Center -- done between March 1st and 7th of a national sample of 4,796 Republicans, with a 2.3 point margin of error.

It just shows how out-of-touch with reality most Republicans really are. About 63% say whites are discriminated as much as Blacks in the U.S. -- and more than either Hispanics or Asians. 

That's a ludicrous view to have, but if they believe they are victims then that can justify their failure to attack real discrimination in this country.

Biden Has A Huge Lead Among Hispanic Voters

 

The chart above is from the NBC News / Wall Street Journal / Telemundo Poll -- done between September 13th and 16th of an oversample of 300 registered Hispanic voters, with a 5.66 point margin of error.

Some people are claiming that Biden is losing support among Hispanic voters. This poll certainly doesn't show that. While they are not as solidly backing the Democratic candidate as Black voters, they are supporting Biden by a huge margin (about 36 points).

If Biden can just come within a few points of Trump among White voters (and it's looking like he will), than Hispanics and Blacks will carry him across the finish line.

Whites Are Not A Majority Of The Texas Population

The numbers in the chart above are from the United States Census Bureau. It shows why Texas Republicans are scared to death of the demographic change happening in Texas -- and why they are doing everything they can to suppress voting in the state.

While Whites are still the largest group in the state -- both in population and registered voters -- it is just barely. And the future is coming fast. By next year (2021), Hispanics will be the largest group in the state -- surpassing Whites.

And Whites are no longer the majority of the Texas population. They only make up 42.03% of the population -- while Hispanics comprise 40.53%, Blacks 12.31%, and Asians 5.13%. That means the Nonwhites make up 57.97% of the population. And both Hispanics and Blacks are growing faster as a portion of the population than Whites -- and Asians are growing almost as fast as Whites.

Here's how The Texas Tribune reports the demographic change happening:

Texas’ Hispanic population has grown by more than 2 million since 2010, according to new population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau, and the state's demographer now predicts that Hispanics will be the state's largest population group by mid-2021.

An annual gain of 201,675 between July 2018 and July 2019 pushed the count of Hispanic residents to more than 11.5 million, the census estimates show. Although annual growth has slowed slightly in recent years, the new figures put a sharp point on how quickly the Hispanic population continues to climb. The annual growth in Hispanic residents has outpaced the combined growth among white, Black and Asian residents every year since 2010.

Texas still has a bigger white population — up to 11.95 million last year — but it grew by just 36,440 last year and by about half a million since 2010. White population growth has been so sluggish this decade that the increase in the number of Asian Texans, who make up a small share of the total population, has almost caught up with the increase in white Texans.