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Latino Voters Are Making the Democrats Sweat

Latino Voters Are Making the Democrats Sweat

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Democrats see their fortunes rising with constituencies they’ll need to run up big victories in the midterm elections. They expect to do especially well with suburban women, even non-college-educated women, and are optimistic about millennials and a decent turnout by African-Americans.

They’re concerned, however, about Latinos, especially men. Latinos are likely to vote Democratic, but the issue is whether they’ll turn out in sufficient numbers for Democrats to win key races.

“I think there will be a modest uptick in the Latino vote,” said Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, a political scientist at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas who studies immigration and Latino political influence. That would be good news for Democrats, but not the great news they hope for.

That vote will be critical in the uphill battle to win control of the Senate. Of the 10 states with the most competitive Senate races, four — Florida, Texas, Arizona and Nevada — have sizable but quite different Hispanic populations. There’s a large Cuban-American community in Florida that has tended to favor Republicans, while Democratic-leaning unions play a bigger role with Nevada’s Latino voters, who are mostly of Mexican descent.

There also are up to a dozen competitive races in those four states for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In a few tightly contested ones, for example in Dallas and Houston, Latino voters could provide the margin to unseat veteran Republican legislators.

In California, a half-dozen Republican House seats are under challenge. In three of these districts — in the Central Valley, San Fernando Valley and Fullerton — Latinos comprise about a quarter of the voting-age population, a concern to Republicans. Around the country there are a few other districts — such as one around Aurora, Colorado and another in the suburbs of Chicago — where a smaller Latino vote could nonetheless be decisive. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried all these Republican-held districts.

To be sure, there are several heavily Latino districts where incumbent Republicans are faring well. These include San Antonio, Texas and Miami, Florida, where Representatives Will Hurd and Carlos Curbelo respectively are considered slightly ahead. Unlike most House Republicans, both have selectively broken with President Donald Trump.

Clinton won two-thirds of the Latino vote nationally in 2016, exit polls showed, and Trump’s attacks on immigrants keep him strikingly unpopular with this constituency, according to many polls, including a September survey of Latino voters by Hart Research Associates.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents to that poll said they disapproved of Trump’s presidency. They wanted Democrats to win control of Congress by a three-to-one margin over Republicans. They overwhelmingly preferred candidates who side with the Dreamers, young adults who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and were allowed to stay under President Barack Obama, and those who oppose building a wall along the Mexican border. Obama was viewed positively by 67 percent of respondents and negatively by only 14 percent. Republicans hope that the strong economy will keep more Latino voters in their corner on Nov. 6, and are also appealing to the cultural conservatives among them.

“Latinos align with Republicans on some issues,” said Barbara Carvalho, director of the Marist Poll. “But the Trump brand causes such problems for them.”

There is no more intense battle than the Senate race in Florida, where Senator Bill Nelson, the Democratic incumbent, faces a strong challenge from Republican Governor Rick Scott. Republicans were cheered last week by an AARP-Univision poll showing Scott with a large lead among Latinos over 50 years old.

Democrats countered with other surveys suggesting that Nelson, after an onslaught of negative ads against him this summer, has bounced back into the lead, but only by a narrow margin.

In Texas, Latinos are central in Democratic Representative Beto O’Rourke’s surprising campaign to upset the incumbent Republican, Senator Ted Cruz. Most polls show the candidates nearly neck and neck as O’Rourke travels back roads campaigning in each of the state’s 254 counties.

DeFrancesco Soto said that O’Rourke was slow to energize Latinos, but that she’s now hearing a lot of Spanish-language radio commercials for the Democrat along with stories of stepped-up grassroots activity.

But to win, she said, O’Rourke has to do better among Latinos; one survey showed Cruz, who’s campaigning as a close Trump ally, lagging O’Rourke among Latino voters by just 9 percentage points.

Democratic strategists said that it’s a challenge for any new candidate like O’Rourke to introduce himself to constituencies with a history of low voter participation.

“It takes time for new candidates to break through, and we are investing record amounts in outreach,” said Dan Sena, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “There will be very few Hispanics in the country who won’t get multiple messages.”

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Albert R. Hunt is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He was the executive editor of Bloomberg News, before which he was a reporter, bureau chief and executive Washington editor at the Wall Street Journal.

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