Posted on April 1, 2020

2020 Primary Polling Proves the ‘Latino Vote’ Isn’t at All Monolithic

Mike Gonzalez, The Federalist, April 1, 2020

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Coronavirus has stopped many things, but it didn’t stop Floridians from voting on St. Patrick’s Day, and there the Latino vote that had sustained Sen. Bernie Sanders in places like Nevada and California just didn’t materialize. In fact, that “Latino vote” went heavily for former Vice President Joe Biden.

It looks, therefore, that Sander’s “Latino” support was therefore more like a “Mexican-American” vote. Even then, it must be caveated further.

Mind you, that vote is not unimportant. Americans of Mexican origin (be it 21st century or 16th century, as New Mexico is replete with voters who can trace their ancestry to Juan de Onate’s expedition across the Rio Grande in 1598) represent some 67 percent of the people the Census Bureau has been identifying as “Hispanic” since 1980.

That’s some 36 million Americans. Pretty soon, Mexican-Americans will overtake German-Americans as the nation’s largest country-of-origin group.

But Florida is a different kettle. The New York Post, which reported on the vote from a more realistic perspective, put it this way: “Latinos were roughly 20 percent of the state’s Democratic voters; 22 percent identified as Cuban, 33 percent as Puerto Rican, and the rest had family ties to other countries. Not only did Biden win Latinos in Florida, he got 65 percent of Puerto Ricans and 56 percent of Cubans.”

That squares with an analysis of heavily Cuban-American precincts in Miami-Dade County conducted by my friend Giancarlo Sopo: 53.2 percent of voters in those districts pulled the lever for Biden; less than 25 percent did so for Sanders.

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Sanders performed much better with Mexican-American voters in California and Texas. In those two states, respectively, Sanders garnered 49 and 45 percent support of the mostly Mexican-American Latinos, to Biden’s 19 and 24 percent. Mexican-Americans make up 84 percent of the people labeled as Hispanics in California and an even more whopping 87 percent in Texas.

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